


let the blood run high

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels Abound, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Multi, Outo Country, Sakura is too pure for this world, Tsubasa family is the best family, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and kurogane is going through a lot, error: capacity for human emotion exposed, fai is a conflicted hot mess, kurogane: ...., kurogane: ...shit, leave it to me to dive back into this POV and take it real dark real fast, mokona is a Little Shit and living for it, outo: happens, some D/s undertones, syaoran is a teen being a teen, there is....a lot going on in this, things end on a positive note, tsundere.exe has stopped working, you can pry the headcannon that outo destroys kurogane from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-05-01 17:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19182232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: It made no difference, if the slant of that pinkish smile reminded him so keenly of his father’s lead samurai, or if the chaotic youth still contained in that boy held an eerie reflection to his own reckless childhood, or if the weight so often shut beneath the flicker of cinnamon lashes held a twisting, bitter calling to his ownMikado, all traits crafting a fierce curl of connection (protectiveness) in him, for reasons he could do little to fathom.All he cared about (orhad, before) was returning, blood and bone and alive.The only thing he hadn’t planned for was the ache that curled beneath his gut, now—a wretched, venomous thing—when he thought of crossing the threshold of those palace gates alone.





	let the blood run high

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> _" Let the people hear it if they want to_  
>  _All the one's around me get it on, too_  
>  _If I die tomorrow and I'm gone, I'm gone_  
>  _Let the blood run high_  
>  _Let the carpets drown_  
>  _I'll be forever numb_
> 
> .
> 
> _Let this be a promise_  
>  _That when it's said and done_  
>  _Be a flower in the garden_  
>  _Be one with the sun "_  
> 

There’s blood on his teeth. On his bones. On his clothes.

Come moonrise, the silks will be soaked beneath cold water, to strip the stain from them; but _now_ —now the slick weight of it pulls talons from his skin, tears lips back to bear fangs that sting copperish when his tongue drags clean the front of them.

Every kill feels like the first: a swooping, white-hot knife of adrenaline that starts in the quickening of his breath and bleeds into the tremor of his heels. It tastes like vengeance, burns through him with _control_ —and if the grin that carves his mouth screams a hell lot more _redemption_ than it does _thrill_ , he can’t be bothered to hide it.

(This is something he’s fought for, _bled_ for, enough times over to rip his skin raw; he’s claimed enough scars to needle his flesh white, sewn shut every tear where death had tried to sink in its claws and failed, and _now_ —ozone painting his tongue, and black blood on his teeth, knuckles slick where they twist tight to braided hilt beneath—Kurogane won’t ( _can’t_ ) fall still.)

The kid is another thing. Beneath the shearing shriek of black limbs that ripple from shadows like undead men, Hien trembles uselessly, a dead weight clung to with both hands as the boy drags air through his teeth, hazel eyes blown wide and wild (and Kurogane can’t fault him for it; it’s his first fight, after all—the first since he had come to him to learn _how_ —and putting new-learned skills to the test, with death clinging so closely to one’s heels, is no small thing, in itself).

It doesn’t lessen the very real weight of its bite, however; Syaoran jolts upon a tightwire of close calls far more than once, each avoidance growing more panicked than the last. It’s no concern to _him_ (every near-blow is cut down before it could even land), but Kurogane keeps sharp eyes on him still, even with the gleam of his blade stained black with ink that splatters fat and foul at his feet; even with the pound of his pulse between his lungs, between his ears, ashen air swallowed down a throat that burns like wildfire.

(It’s not charred smoke, not dying flames, not the scent of death clinging to his skin—his mind had left him in that moment, torn away long enough that he could scarcely remember his own name, when he came to—but it’s familiar all the same: a smoldering burn through every vein that sings at him to _swing, cleave, stay standing._ )

He can’t expect the kid to have the same itch for survival, not with hands so young; the mage, on the other hand—back to back, smile splintering like glass with an edge that is raw and rugged and _real_ —he fights with death like an old friend, as effortless as a breeze tangled through the leaves (and more often than not, flirts with it like an old lover, with a careless grace that for more than one near-fatal fight had left Kurogane with heart in his throat and hands of lead, powerless to the desperate unvoiced of _Why?_ ).

He can’t think about it here. There’s _too much_ —too much to fight down, to kill, to _protect_ —and when Syaoran staggers through a jolting step, instinct to drive his strength to his toes rather than his fingertips, with the sweeping jaws of their _oni_ descending like starving hounds, it takes nothing at all for Kurogane to let his fury sweep him through, a roaring flame unleashed on dead bark; Souhi’s tilt gleams blue, burning with the echoes of olden magicks as he shears spasming neck from liquid shoulders, and Syaoran balks at the sight of it as the wet thud of its skull lolls at his feet, hissing slow into a curl of ash.

It’s a gradual thing, when the tunnel of his vision fades. Kurogane draws himself from his heels with lungs puffing low and skin splattered black, one hand raising to smear the tang of not-human blood from his mouth. Beneath the twist of his shadow, the boy shivers to his feet, knuckles whitened where his blade clanks shrilly over the pavement.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“S’alright.”

“I should’ve—I _couldn’t_ —”

“It’s _alright_.”

Even through the dark, the heat of ember eyes _sting_ , and Syaoran stiffens beneath the burn of them as he pulls fumbling lips tight, keeps hazel eyes fixed forward. The clack of Kurogane’s _geta_ echoes too loud through the sudden quiet, only the distant hum of the street lamps above a bystander to them when one palm reaches out to squeeze through almond tufts. It makes it almost easy enough to forget, even with the callous of one dark thumb slipping wet across his temple.

“I won’t always be there to watch your back,” mutters Kurogane, rough with something the kid can’t know (there’s no way he _could_ ; not yet, at least), but the warning comes through clear as unbroken light ( _You have to stand on your own_ ).

Syaoran nods, a dizzied hum of acknowledgement. He looks too young to be so bloodied and broodish, with the lamplight flickered over him like this; Kurogane just presses another twist through his hair, slips his hand off to send that smaller head buoying.

“C’mon,” he huffs, and slings the flat of Souhi’s blackened blade across his shoulders, not sparing a glance back as he sets off on the trek home. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

There’s a little grunt, and a scuff of the flat of the kid’s shoes, the _shhhink_ of Hien being snapped to its sheath coming quick through the stillness—but the boy takes little time at all to follow, and through the gloom, Kurogane leads him.

.:.

Picking the _hakama_ had been a thoughtless thing.

Through a sea of rainbowed sleeves and gaudy accessories, he had wandered aimless, steps a creaking weight beneath him; the kid had taken off like one in a candy store, quick to sprint beneath the billowing flag of the first clothing vendor they’d passed, fast enough that Kurogane had been left balking through the crowds—but it had taken him little effort to bend his head beneath the clatter of beaded doorway and find the boy caught in a sea of self-mumblings, his hands clinging to his uniform of choice: crisp-collared and mossy green, square trousers an earthen brown.

He’d taken every chance to scowl and _hgh_ and shuffle awkward away, not wanting anything to do with the buzz of hushed monologues over what trinket to tote home for the princess, forced to crawl deeper into a hellish womb of color, gold, steel.

He’d seen jewelry and pressed collars and enough billowing skirts to drown a man, disinterested in it all save the glint of raw celestine that hung, thin-chained, along a wall of humming gemstone (the color had put a hitch in his steps and a haze through his thoughts, pulled back to an unnerving, unharnnessable _depth_ he had spent more nights than he cared to admit puzzling over). He’d poked at its jagged edges with one finger, at a loss for why the familiarity of its color stung in him so, until realization had sent his cheeks prickling, his spine stiff; his boots had clunked away with him in a glowering retreat, denial a stifling itch under his skin.

He’d been distracted. (He just wanted to _leave_.) Then he saw folded cotton and patterned silk, felt himself slip away from all consciousness into the cold rustle of morning dew at his ankles, the scent of mountain air chasing through young ricefields, one scarred palm trailing out of its own accord.

( _Did you find anything, Kurogane-san?_ the kid had asked, the closeness of his voice a far-off hum as calloused fingers brushed over silk pleats black as night, twisting slow through their coolness. He’d cleared his throat then, too quiet beneath the knit of his brow, but he couldn’t bring himself to _care_ —the knot of that folded cloth had rasped beneath his thumb, jaw gritting slow against the memory of crimson silk and hair dark as ocean’s depths, eyes soft and gleaming and sharp as mica.

 _Yeah_ , he’d muttered, simple enough.)

He ties it around his waist now, whispering slow between his fingers, _kosode_ straightened beneath and short collar buttoned. The _haori_ is left untouched, still hung where it had been dried out the night before, the morning too early for it; bare feet carry him from closed door down the creak of weathered hallway, a silent weight with each step pressed to polished stair.

Rising with the dawn is something he can’t shake, even with battle formations and training regiments long left behind (he finds some kind of comfort it in, now, seeing the haze of pinkish gray that chases through lashes still groggy with sleep), and through the hitch in his breath and the scrub of one palm over roughened cheek, the scent of something herbal and sharp only half-registers.

It’s too early for the lot of them to be awake— _should_ be, at least—but Kurogane flicks his eyes from rustling curtain over open window to the glow of one warm lamp and the steaming teapot beneath, a quirk carving quick through his brow.

(It’s _sencha_ , one of his favorites, the savory curl of its taste intimately known as he pads over to clip open the lid for a peek.)

“Mm,” comes a rumbling breath, startling him to stone; another set of feet, clumsy in their heaviness, creak down the staircase as well, and Kurogane cracks the lid down like a child caught red-handed, gaze ripping back to stumble over the bedraggled mess of whisped blond that descends to the floorboards. Fair palms grind slow over scrunched eyes as the mage wobbles up to the bar, a rattled yawn heaved from his lungs and shoulders crackling beneath the roll of his spine. “You’re up early,” he breathes, sinking to his elbows against the flat of polished wood, and the sleepish blink of hauntingly blue eyes locks onto the man across from him with a soft smile. “I figured I’d start on tea, but I didn’t think you’d—” Another yawn huffs with the crinkle of his nose, lionish and squeaking beneath the press of one set of blushed knuckles. “— _mgh_. Although, I really shouldn’t be surprised, should I? Of course you would— _anyway_ —” Fai smiles then, cheeks wrinkling beneath the press of his palms as he pillows his face into them, still in a disheveled state of half-buttoned sleepclothes and bare feet. “Morning, Kuro-tan.”

(The tiredness, the _warmth_ , the rasp of it all stings beneath him, the tilt of that smile just a breadth too off-kilter to be the one he _knows_ (a steelish line, calculated, so often bared like a weapon)—and even through his still-waking mind, Kurogane falters beneath sight of it.

Of course, the brewing tea and half-managed state of dress between them both doesn’t _help_ —there’s something lingering beneath the surface of it all that pulls his throat drying, the domesticity a strange, aching thing he increasingly has no idea what to do with.)

“Hn,” he hums, as good enough response as any. Calloused fingertips speckle darkly over the wood as he sinks into the bend of one elbow, his palm raising to catch the tilt of his jaw as he drags a breath sharp through his nose, blinks quiet through the stillness. His voice mumbles around the press of his skin, the crease of one dark brow an unvoiced nudge to where his eyes fall. “You, uh…you like _sencha_?”

“Hm?” Fai blinks cattishly at him, golden brows wrinkling tight before his eyes swing down to the teapot between them, and he perks immediately into a grin dazzling as starlight, even through the grogginess of it, one hand flicking down to fiddle over its polished handle. “Oh! Well, I haven’t tried it much, myself—always been more one for black tea, you know; we used to mix it with fresh cream and honey, and on cold nights, it was _delicious_ —but I remember you saying something—oh, what _was_ it?— _anyway_ , I saw it when we were out shopping, and I thought, well, Kuro-tan would probably like some, wouldn’t he?—and then I—well, I _think_ I steeped it right—”

The babble comes on like a downpour, and Kurogane blinks dumbfoundedly in the wash of it as that voice lilts through the grit of sleep still, purring and low and trillish all at once. Whatever words cached to fire next die off before they can be spoken; the mage swats one willowy hand in dismissal before himself, smile curling bemused and just a prick self-conscious, before he brandishes a teacup from beneath the bar, dumping a smooth pour from steaming pot into it with cheek sinking to palm once more.

“ _Well_ —you’ll just have to try and see,” he murmurs then, softening with its finality; Kurogane can only stare in the swath of crooked grin and tilting head as the blond wags the teapot in the air still, steam curling slow from the cup slid before him.

(It’s… _weird_ , the way his cheeks sting. He’s not used to it. He doesn’t know _why_. But the prickle of heat lingers, nonetheless, a small thing coughed off quick and diverted as he curls his knuckles beneath the bend of the cup’s handle, draws it slow to his lips.)

“You’re not gonna try it?” Kurogane mutters, the arch of his brows a subtle thing before he tips the porcelain back, warm and salt and savory on his tongue.

(It’s a tiny pleasure, one of few he’ll allow himself; the rustle of his breath as he captures that scent, swallowing down another slow gulp, all pulls him back to restless nights on open verandas, crescent moons speckling light high through the sway of summer pine, _home_.)

“Well, I—I guess I could,” whispers Fai, just a touch hesitant. Dark lashes raise enough to watch the sleep-riddled lines of that pale face crease into an animated flurry, all furrowed brow and dimpling cheek and puffing mouth as another cup is clapped down from behind the bar.

(He already has an inkling, even before its edge is drawn to parting lips, that the mage will spit it out on the first sip; it’s with some strange pride that he feels his mouth curl when the man before him scrunches to a prune beneath the first swish past his teeth, nose wrinkling through the ripple of his throat.)

“ _Eugh_ ,” Fai cries, tongue smacking out in earnest. “It’s _bitter_.”

Kurogane can’t hold back the rumble in his throat, twisting his mouth beneath the snort of it.

“What’d you expect?” he grouses.

“It—it tastes like _seawater_ —”

“You don’t like it, get something else.”

(The curl at his mouth twitches farther behind the lip of his cup, disobedient, as he watches that straw-headed idiot give up entirely, resorting to dumping in enough milk and sugar to turn the tea off-white.)

Kurogane tops off his cup slowly, pot clanked heavy back to the bar before he nudges himself further to his feet, his tea swept off with him. He doesn’t give any warning—he usually sits outside in the mornings, anyhow, the routine enough that the lot of them know where to look, given an early enough need to chase him down—and he can feel the stutter of that sleepy gaze upon his back for only a moment before realization hits. It’s not long after he’s squeaked the _shoji_ to their terrace open, settling with short breath to the floorboards, before another patter of steps follow (cotton trousers still rumpled from a sprawling sleep, hanging off-kilter over the bend of thin ankles), and Kurogane keeps his gaze absent on the shuffle of one bandaged foot as it stretches into a soft clunk, its twin flopping bare and crooked over the spread of skinny knee.

Fai, to some surprise, says nothing beneath the quiet of morning; the rustle of cool wind eases through the twisting branches of their courtyard’s flora, a gentle hush of crickets chirping quiet through the stillness, and a soft sigh is eased as he sips at what may as well be sugar-water, for all the spoonfuls he had stirred in. It’s a short moment before Kurogane tears his eyes away, darting from his cup to lap and then farther aside still beneath the puzzled crease in his brow.

“Syao-kun seems to be improving quickly,” the mage says at last, a smile in his voice. One set of willowy fingers slip free from their hold on warm porcelain to scatter through the tangle of golden fringe, slipping down to rest in a dull weight over the back of bent neck. Kurogane feels a shiver prickle down his spine when those eyes flick over to him, warm as a cresting sun. “Although, I’m sure his teacher has plenty to do with that,” he continues, and grins.

“Tche.”

(There’s no reason for his face to color, none at _all_ —he keeps his head stubbornly turned away, slurping through his next sip quickly.)

“ _Ne_ , whatever shall we do with you?” Fai sighs, breaking into a tiny chuckle that rasps too light and too _real_ , even with the cut of that familiar grin heard through his words. “Always leaving me to talk on and _on_ to myself—doesn’t make the best picture of sanity, on my part.”

“Say that like there’s any sanity in you,” Kurogane grunts, and can’t help the prick of a smirk that starts at the heartbroken _wail_ that follows (hidden quick beneath the tip of his cup, teeth clacking against the porcelain just enough before he swallows down another drink); the mage throws down one hand in a flair of over-dramatics, leaning deep into its anchor as he gestures wild with whatever free fingers he can manage around splashing tea.

“I am perfectly _sane_ , thank you—now _you_ , you great brute of a man; some right you have to come complaining to me, when all you do is run off looking for a fight just to come home with bloodied laundry every night—and a fat lot of good that’s done you, rewashing the same fifty-layered-whatever over and _over_ again—”

“ _Hakama_ ,” Kurogane corrects, bitten short through the vein he can feel pulsing in his temple.

(It’s sharp, and swift, and _familiar_ , this game they play.

He never misses the chance to see who will one-up who.)

“ _Whatever_ ,” Fai huffs, petulant, and sticks up his nose with an air of childish theatrics that pulls a snort from the man beside him. “Seems like a mark of insanity, to me—”

“If I got one thing that works, I don’t need _thirty_ of ‘em—”

“Not much of a man for variety, are you?”

“ _Tche_.”

The banter falls easily enough, melting back into a quiet that could almost be called pleasant. (Kurogane doesn’t want to think about that, though—he _can’t_ ; not with that voice too familiar in its sing-songing; not with that smile too performed, whatever man buried beneath the layers of it still too far gone for him to know him at all.) Fai twists his cup between his fingers slowly, only a flicker of movement in his peripheral, steam still curling faint from it.

“The boy really does look up to you, you know,” he says then, and it’s muted, the shift abrupt enough to pull dusky fingers stilling where knuckles twist tighter over the curve of his handle. “He probably…he probably misses his father, a lot. I’m sure they both do.”

Kurogane swallows, a half-formed thing.

“So?” he scoffs, as if the knowledge of it means nothing at all. His next drink comes with forced quickness, a swooping, needed distraction from the sting of something he can’t put a name to. “I’m sure homesickness ain’t new to them, at this point—”

“I _know_ it drives you crazy, the ‘father’ thing—but I mean it.” The mage’s voice is too deep, rasped too soft, to be normal at _all_ , and Kurogane sends bloodish eyes slow across from him as his brow curls tight above, unable to do anything but sit speechless in the breath of it. “They just…they want that from you, you know? Not that you _have_ to give it, but…” There’s something in that voice, an unspoken distance, as though the image of blond head and crooking smile occupying a similar role had already been blotted out, even with the nurturing of it happening already. (It’s _denial_ , a subtle shift from one set of hands into another, and Kurogane feels something beneath his lungs jolt at the implication of it.) “Anyway.”

Fai smiles then, too wide and too balanced. Whatever flowery notions ready to spill out from him melt into a vague gesturing of the teacup in hand, his eyes slipping away to turn forward, and then he takes another slow sip, saying nothing else at all. Kurogane just _stares_ , too tailspun to do anything else ( _But what?_ he wants to seethe, with an aching desperation he cannot understand, cannot even bring himself to _acknowledge_ —it’s as much a loss of direction, in the forced recognition of the kids actually _meaning_ a damn thing, as it is an eerie callback to something else entirely, and a knot beneath his chest tears at the very thought of it, the ability to sink his weight back into gangly heels and brattish scowling and the sweep of a cloak the color of summer night a frighteningly fast thing.)

“Kuro-sama?” Fai murmurs then, sounding like a whisper through cotton. Dark lashes flutter fast, mouth creasing beneath the startle of reality seeping back to him.

Kurogane knocks back the last of his tea in a steady swallow, throat still too dry in the face of it; it’s a slow thing, when he stands, towering and silent and pinkish-gold against the flicker of dawn beyond the eaves, not saying another word as he crosses the threshold inside. The screen is left open, the rigid turn of blond head only half-felt as he clunks his teacup to the bar.

(He still sees moonlit grass, midnight flames; still tastes the sweet tang of cut herbs and bitter blood both, and he can’t care for the way those eyes stay latched to him with something like shock, like fear, like another emotion he can’t place—he creaks up the stairs slowly, breathing kept measured and still, and only allows it to crumble once the metallic jolt of his door’s hinges has been pulled shut behind him.)

.:.

“So, we need wheat flour,” drawls a soft voice, pitched high in its murmuring, “And…gosh, Fai-san writes so _small_ —milk? And what else… Oh! I remember him saying honey, and something else, for a new dessert—almonds, I think—Kurogane-san, can you read _any_ of this?”

“ _Feh_. Don’t ask me.”

He glances over, anyway—not because she _asked_ , of course; he’s only curious if the mage’s chicken-scratch really is that bad. The scrawl’s a miniscule thing, all squiggled drags and curling flicks and sharp lines (signed with a doodle of a godforsaken _cat_ , of all things), and he has to blink for a moment when the letters blur into smooth brushes of _Nihongo_ , its mimicked handwriting thin and delicate.

(The reach of that _manjuu’s_ damned magic couldn’t be avoided anywhere, it seemed.)

“Wheat flour, milk, salt, cinnamon,” he recites flatly, stooping down with hands on his hips to squint at every line tacked thin on rolled receipt paper, “ _Rice flour_ —what’s the idiot need _two_ types for?—honey, sesame…”

His voice trails off, a rumbling huff.

(Of course the bastard had put _liquor_.

But in parenthesis, tucked neat into its shadow, he’d scrawled _shochu_.)

“The _hell_ ,” Kurogane grumbles, straightening his spine quick to scowl off into the crowd before them. “He doesn’t even _like_ it.”

(He had enough room to know, too—they had spent countless hours debating the differences of liquor between worlds, and the first night of many—three bags’ worth of bottles laid between them against the grit of that obnoxious husband’s _tatami_ —had left Kurogane nothing short of floored; Fai had thrown out enough knowledge about spirit classifications to make even a proper alcoholic blush (and here _he_ was the one always being labeled as a drunkard, the little _shit_ ), and had argued, quite vicariously, that vodkas, gins, and whiskeys were of the highest superiority, based on content percentages and taste alone. Kurogane (who had, absolutely, _not_ been impressed), had picked a bullish stance on aromatics and ceremonial rites and the importance of _what_ a drink meant, rather than how quickly a straight glass of it could be guzzled down—and they had reached what could narrowly be called an agreement that clear liquor was always a safe bet to be shared between them both.

That was, until he had gotten his hands on a bottle of _soju_ from a night market in Koryo; the mage had never had a drop of rice-distilled spirits in his life, and had raised enough hell during one memorable night of reinvigorated alcohol-arguing to wake the neighbors.)

“I remember him saying something about that, too,” the girl beside him mumbles, face scrunching in her failed attempt to rack her memory.

(It wasn’t _cute_. He didn’t look. He knew better.)

“He probably wanted to get it for you,” Sakura hums then, with a thoughtless shrug, and rolls the list neat around her finger.

(It’s as if the weight of a thousand tons have plummeted to his shoulders, for how much they lurch beneath that small suggestion.) 

“ _Tche_ ,” Kurogane scoffs, after a pause too long to be comfortable. He clears his throat loudly, bracing palms to arms in a stiff jerk. “We’re gonna be in that spice store all day, aren’t we?”

“Not _all_ day,” the girl laughs, it’s lilt an airy thing, no doubt taken clear from that grinning idiot. Still, she sounds far too delighted for his own good; he sinks only into a deeper glower, pressing another huff through his teeth.

They walk on in silence like that for a long moment, her shorter frame a humming bobble of swinging steps and bright eyes, himself a trodding mule beneath furrowed brow. It’s only the glitter of wind through a nearby charm that shatters it; he’s almost pulled sideways with how suddenly small hands wrinkle into the sleeve of his _haori_ for balance, her shoes a wobbling mess as one hand shoots out from her to point to the storefront some awnings away.

“ _Oh_!” Sakura gasps, “Look, _look_ —they have one shaped like a little bird! Oh, it’s so _cute_ —” Another breathless heave rattles from her, quick as a stream down spilling rock. “And that _store_ —look how many books there are, I bet Syaoran-kun would be in there for _days_ —and those flags are so pretty!”

(He’d expected this, at some point—there had been a wicked challenge in slanted mouth and glittering eyes when the mage had wagged that little list in front of him, with the full knowledge that the princess would lace up her boots and beg to join, the commerce district a region she had been dying to explore since their first landing here.

 _You gonna go with her, tough guy?_ that smile had said, smug and dagger-sharp and sweet as syrup, and he had been ready to break the doorhandle with how quickly it had sent him bristling.)

“Oh, can we look, _please_ —”

“...Mh.”

(He realizes, far too late, that he never should have given her the reins; the girl slips into a skipping run, and even with the floatish grace of those small steps, he’s torn after her by a grip strong as iron, spluttering and clumsy and skin entirely _not_ red as his _geta_ clatter in a violent torrent beneath him.)

“ _Oi_ ,” Kurogane barks, the clamber of his heels an ugly stab through his pride as he’s tugged through a forest of silken shoulders and knotted hair. There’s a jolt of motion, the warmth at his sleeve torn free, and the princess springs from him like a branch snapped; he’s left in a fumbling daze, directionless, as his head bends one way and then another, surrounded by a sea of faces he does not know. The scuff of his feet turns a noisy thing as he twists into a circle, just a breadth short of frantic, a cold shock spilling across his spine as he wonders, for one terrifying moment, if he’s lost her.

(The bastard’ll _kill_ _him_.)

“So pretty,” comes a warm coo, somewhere off to his right; he snaps after the sound quick enough to put a crack in his neck, shoulders splitting into a pained arch as he grits gibberish through his teeth, cuts up one palm to squeeze over tight muscle. The princess, entirely unaware, has tucked herself beneath a walled display of paper umbrellas just a stride away; she twirls an opened one slow between her fingers, painted into a floral print of pink and blue and summer green, its colors a kaleidoscopic blur through the low light. He shoves through a triplet of bystanders, with little care for their mutterings, just as she lays it over her shoulder and flashes him a beaming smile, shy though that it is. “What do you think, Kurogane-san?”

( _Don’t you dare do that again_ , is what he wants to say, its spite already searing between his teeth. He swallows it down, the stiffness of his spine loosened slow as his eyes cut away.)

“Just a _wagasa_ ,” he mutters, throat coughed clear as he braces his hands to his hips. “Never seen one before?”

“Mn-mn,” hums Sakura, with a quick shake of her heard. “They’re all decorated so intricately.” She lifts the umbrella from her shoulder, mouth pinching worrysome as she flounders over how to draw it closed.

“They’re for festivals,” Kurgoane says, plucking its painted handle from her hands to curl his knuckles about the fan of its bamboo spine, slid up easily into a snap of lowered lattice. “You find one you wanna go to, you can get one.” The parasol is dropped back into its holster with a quiet clack, and beside him, the princess flusters into speechlessness, shaking hands and babbling words coming torrential through the explosion of her blush.

“ _Oh_ , n-no, no, I couldn’t,” she blubbers, “I don’t—it’s not—”

A large palm falls slow to the frazzled curls of cinnamon hair, a squeeze gentler than usual.

“If the others can fill three trunks worth with whatever they damn well please, so can you,” Kurogane mutters, its dismissal warm despite the flicker of annoyance that lines his mouth (because they _had_ , and _he_ was been the one so often tasked with lugging them around), and the heat of calloused fingers are gone as soon as they came, braced firm to broad waist. “That list, remember?”

“ _Right_ ,” Sakura blurts, “Right, right—oh!”

Kurogane can do nothing but glare forward when the girl takes off to another shelf, fretting with smile instantly dazzling and distracted over a pile of leather-bound journals.

“Oi.”

“He would just _love_ this—”

“… _Oi_.”

“Oh, Kurogane-san, _look_!”

He’s left to blink baffled in the twist of motion as the girl clatters something from the wall above, swaying on her toes against the reach of it. She spins on her heel, quick as anything, to brandish a string of beads before her—sanded mahogany, amazonite, jade, moonstone, all cloudy in their lack of polishing—that drips into a jagged pearl of pale crystal above a tassel of frayed cloth and horsehair.

(It’s the mineral that’s no doubt caught her attention, sharp and vibrant and ice-blue—the very same he had faltered over, before.)

“This looks just like Fai-san’s eyes, doesn’t it?” Sakura breathes, holding her hand high to fit the length of the beads into her field of vision, with little care for _what_ she was baring before him (even beneath the stark fold of a pricetag, tied with crimson string around the middle of its strand, he can _feel_ the hum of an old power within them—it’s knownness throws him swift to mid-morning pilgrimages under the hawkish thumb of the empress, broodish and young and left to stand guard while the _miko_ paid her acknowledgements at temples towering enough to put a crane in his neck, even on horseback).

“They’re _ojuzu_ ,” he says, after a moment, and swallows. The princess just crooks her head at him, as though he’s gone off and spoken in tongues. “Prayer beads,” he supplements, and has to jolt up one palm to catch the rattled plummet of them through the shock of her fingers, emerald eyes blown wide and apologetic.

“Oh, _oh_ , I didn’t know!” she gasps, clasping her hands to her mouth in dread for whatever disrespect she’s tacked onto herself. “Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

(They’re heavy, cold, against his touch; he curls them slow around his fingers, the sing of their power a faint thing, still, but all the more present on his skin.

It’s the crystal that calls out the strongest to him. No part of him wants to reason  _why_.)

“S’alright,” he murmurs, “You didn’t know.”

“But—oh, I—” Even with the frantic spew of those small lips, those eyes are _curious_ , her hands lowering to clasp hesitant before her. “Um…why…why are there—?”

“108,” Kurogane continues, not needing her to finish to know. (He’d asked the same once, crouched on his knees in his mistress’s shrine, long after they had returned home.) His thumb grits slow over two of them, cold stone and smooth wood, a twitch in his brow. “One for every time a rite is performed.”

“A rite?” presses Sakura quietly. Her head tilts, a spill of honeyed fringe over her brow. “Like a prayer?”

“Anything. A mantra, a prayer, a breath…” The weight of the celestine is a heavy thing, cold where it hangs against his wrist, and he twists the beads tighter between the rasp of his fingers to pull it closer to his palm, lost in some kind of hypnotism he only nurtures for one flutter of his lungs.  “…a devotion.” His eyes skitter away then, quick as the ripple of his throat. “It’s just…somethin’ monks use.”

“Oh,” Sakura whispers, awed more than anything. She smiles then, hair tucked with only some fumbling behind her ear, and lifts up the journal she had been eyeing beforehand, detailed finely with hammered leaves and golden thread. “I, um—well, I saw this, and I thought Syaoran-kun might like it—what do you think?”

Kurogane just shrugs, head turned with something like a grunt. (He doesn’t put the beads down, even as her grin flourishes into one wide and relieved.)

“Then I’ll get it!” She fishes instantly through her pockets for the chip whatever strange currency of this world was stored on. “I hope he likes it—he’s constantly writing, you know; I think he’ll actually use it!”

“Hn.”

There’s a tug on his sleeve, soft and light and nothing like what he’s used to (the hands so often crawling over him are roughened and thin and rarely thwarted, even with elbow knocking wide and snarl bared at the crawl of their fingertips towards his shoulder), and he’s halfway to jerking his arm away with an instinctive _Idiot_ before his eyes land on pinkish fingers and a smile soft as it is shy, yanked into baffled stillness at the sight.

“Well, come _on_ ,” Sakura laughs, near-dragging him as she clasps both hands about the bend of his elbow; he has some sense of mind to follow after her, even with his _geta_ a clumsy stretch of half-formed strides, because his thoughts are torn in four different directions in the face of it (his own hands, dimpling into dragon-inked skin; the shiverish knot in his gut at the _difference_ , still lingering on the touch already so known; the sing of quiet, cold, calm that rattles beneath the clench of his fingers; the strange flutter that rises between his lungs, a voice rumbling and soft through its rasp of sleep knocking between his ears— _They want that from you, you know?_ ).

“650 En for that one,” comes a scratchy voice, “And for those—950.”

“Kurogane-san,” whispers the princess, and he all but jumps out of his skin when the weight on his elbow turns into a little sway against his bones.

“ _Hah_ —?”

“950 En,” their salesman repeats, eyes directed pointedly to the beads still curled within his palm. Kurogane splutters, shoulders stiffening like a bowstring ready to snap. “Don’t be shy,” the man cackles, and the knowing glint in his eye is enough to pull tense jaw a full bite tighter as one bony finger raises to wave at him. “There’s priest-blood in you. They’re calling to it; be a shame, to tell ‘em no.”

There’s too many eyes on him—one set fluttering wide, the other crinkling uneven with an old smile—and beneath the burn of them both he can feel his skin prickle red.

( _Damn it all_.)

“I, uh—”

“He’ll take it!” Sakura says cheerily, sliding the chip whose shape so closely resembled her name upon the countertop with a soft scrape. Kurogane, balking, just blubbers at her.

“Wh—I—I _don’t_ —”

The salesman snatches it with a deceivingly warm grin, scanned quick into a reader with a small _crick_ , and wastes no time at all to wrap their purchases beneath brown paper bags, extended separately to them both.

Kurogane snatches his own in a vicious crinkle, ears burning, and storms off.

.:.

They buy wheat flour, and rice flour, and milk, and salt, and cinnamon, and honey, and sesame, all tied neat into cloth sachets.

(It’s a good hour and a half before he can convince the girl to leave the spices _alone_ , dammit, though her lingering comes as no surprise.)

He’s much quicker with his own choices, once they’ve ducked beneath the flag of a distillery, a black-labeled bottle plucked easily from the shelves—a personal favorite, and nothing cheap (if the bastard was paying, _he_ was getting whatever the hell he wanted). He had already been set to flap his hand expectantly for that little fake-flower-whatever when his eyes had landed on three shelves’ worth of _sake_ , and by then, any sense of efficiency had fled him.

(It wasn’t as if _he_ was the one wanting it—wine was for winter nights, boiled in warm pots and sipped slow with others, and that should have been reason enough for him to turn his shoulder and _leave_ —but he had glowered for a long moment at three separate bottles, yanked with skittering step and wallowing shoulders back to stare between them, a twitch in his mouth, and the princess had been none the wiser when he stashed the neck of one flavored with lychee beneath his arm.)

They tote their purchases in heavy paper bags, the smallest of them all buried beneath a nesting maze of three others (even still, he can feel its warmth tingling up his arm, and with jaw tight and breath gritting, he does his _damnedest_ to ignore it)—and once they cross the threshold of pebbled path, black cat winking inkishly from its marker, the smell of a meal freshly prepared has already washed across their noses.

“Welcome home, welcome home!” cheers Mokona, when the door creaks open beneath the weight of his palm to savory air and a glow of low light; the smack of pearlish fur is quick to be pitched away by spasmed fingers and growling mouth, and it's Syaoran who catches her, silverware falling into a sharp clatter beneath his gaping palms as he fumbles to tear her away from crashing into the liquor cabinet.

“ _Just_ in time,” comes warm lull, and Kurogane’s eyes are drawn around shifting paper to a plethora of plates steaming from the counter and a set of fair fingers ripping herbs finely above each. The boy’s gone off on a tangent again, something about needing to train before sundown, and the mage’s voice falls a full octave as he grits back something like _Dinner, Syao-kun_ , with a smile frightening as it is warm; the silverware is clapped back to the table with unnecessary flare, hazel eyes turned to bladepoints beneath the burn of them, and for a moment, Kurogane almost _laughs_ (it’s only grown with time that the kid’s shown his true colors, broodish and stubborn and a downright _brat_ , when he wanted to be; more and more, the sight of that scowling face strings a knot in his chest—an image of something far too familiar and too fond).

“Gonna throw a fit every time you’re asked to do something?” is what he says, instead, _geta_ shucked off at the doorway and purchases crinkled upon the countertop in a great slump (the mage is quick to stick his nose into them, _Ooh_ -ing and _Ahh_ -ing as thin fingers are sent into an immediate storm of unpacking), and Syaoran turns pale as ash, shoulders jumping high.

“N-No, _sensei_!” he blurts, and snaps into an apologetic bow. The gesture only earns him an arch of one dark brow.

“Oh, this is going to make the _best_ rice cakes,” babbles Fai, inhaling from every cloth sachet he uncovers, and it’s only once he’s made it to the clunk of glass bottles beneath (the bag tucked inside whipped out quicker than lightning to shove into Sakura’s unexpecting hands, ears red and shoulders tight) that his voice pitches into its familiar cry, ignored like the picture of banality itself as Syaoran smacks each plate to their table. “ _Agh_! Kuro-papa has brought home even _more_ alcohol than I asked—whatever shall we do?!” Willowy fingers fling to cradle slumping brow as the mage breathes out a dramatic sigh. “Then again, should I even be surprised—give a happy drunkard his permissions, and he’ll just take _off_ at the reins—”

(There’s the familiar bite on his tongue, ready to cut back; to growl empty threats and promise unfulfilled payback, as it always does—and, if the quirk of blond brow and flick of glittering eyes is anything to go by, the man before him _expects_ it, with all the thrill of a cat toying with a mouse—but it never comes.

His neck burns, instead, and his chest stutters with lungs full of cotton, teeth clicking helplessly as a thousand explanations clamber to the surface.)

“Kuro-drunk can’t even deny it?” Fai prods on, a playful callout—yet even so, the gleam behind those eyes turn anxious ( _Did I strike a nerve why aren’t you responding say something_ ), and Kurogane just ruffles to stone beneath the stare of them.

“Uh,” he manages, after a dredging moment, brow knitted and eyes avoided and fingers scattered where they fall on his nape. He points stupidly to the golden bottle the mage had cradled close through his spew of theatrics, words in his throat. “Well, you…I got… _shochu_ , so I thought…uh…” Fai’s brows have risen far into his hairline, bottle clunking soft to the wood with the sink of his elbows, and Kurogane _burns_. “Thought you, uh…I mean, you don’t _like_ the damn stuff, but that’s—that’s sweet, so I…thought I’d…return…”

( _The favor_ , he wants to yell, pounding like a drum in his skull, _Just say ‘return the fucking favor’!_ )

“…Y’know.”

(He knew he never should have bothered, as soon as he laid eyes on the damn thing.)

“Oh,” Fai mumbles, lashes fluttering wide. Kurogane doesn’t dare look up at him. “Um. Well, thank you, Kuro-pon.”

“It’s ready!” announces Syaoran, with a final plunk of tableware upon their mats; the call is enough reason for distraction that Kurogane snatches it without a second thought, shoved up from the bar like a metal spring. It’s only once he grubbles to the boy’s side that he falters, the wrinkle in his mouth pulled unexpectedly thin.

There’s a seat left for him at the table. A cup of tea waiting beneath curling steam.

(He knows its routine, nothing more—much the same as the light kept on by the doorway; the hand-scrawled notes beneath lunches left behind; the empty spaces in the foyer, where shoe and coat and every marker of a presence solely _his_ have claimed.

He _knows_ that’s all it is.

Yet it puts an odd flutter in his gut, ties a strange prick into his mouth, with every instance, every unspoken welcome—as though he had always filled the space between them; as though he had never left.)

“Mokona will sit beside Sakura tonight!” peeps the _manjuu_ , wobbling neatly into a squeak of a sit before one of five steaming plates (and if anyone side-eyes the fact she had chosen what seemed to be the largest portion, no comment is made on it).

“Well?” says the princess, smiling brightly as she sinks into her seat, and closes her hands before her. “We should give thanks, right?”

Kurogane blinks, the squeak of the chair coming too loud beneath his weight.

“Oh, right,” Syaoran blurts, and similarly claps his palms tight, head already bowed forward in anticipation. It’s the _manjuu_ that follows after him, paws shuffling eager with delight, and then, with a smile ticking soft on one side, the mage, thin fingers rasping to lay smooth together.

There’s a moment—the air thick with quiet, breath whistling soft from the girl’s nose as she draws in a short gust of air, sliding thick and slow from the man who sits lax beside him—before he feels the heat of hazel eyes dart up to his own with brown brows wrinkling expectantly, and Kurogane flusters, dark lashes blinking quick, elbows sinking to the table and palms pressing firm.

“ _Ikadakimasu_ ,” he mutters, head bobbing with wrinkle only a faint thing in his brow, and the resounding echo that follows is a gentle whisper of a thing (all off-pitch and off-timed, but repeated all the same).

When his fingers slide away, the flutter of motion that blurs past him carries on, as though nothing’s happened at all—the boy is already doubled over to shovel a slurp of stew into his mouth, scolded first with exasperated stare and then dismissed with snorting smile by the man beside him, the princess and the _manjuu_ in a shared ramble of glittering praise for the meal gingerly savored.

(None of it should have meant anything. None of it ever _would_.

It made no difference, if the slant of that pinkish smile reminded him so keenly of his father’s lead samurai, or if the chaotic youth still contained in that boy held an eerie reflection to his own reckless childhood, or if the weight so often shut beneath the flicker of cinnamon lashes held a twisting, bitter calling to his own _Mikado_ , all traits crafting a fierce curl of connection ( _protectiveness_ ) in him, for reasons he could do little to fathom.

All he cared about (or _had_ , before) was _returning_ , blood and bone and alive.

The only thing he hadn’t planned for was the ache that curled beneath his gut, now—a wretched, venomous thing—when he thought of crossing the threshold of those palace gates alone.)

.:.

The curl of black smoke above them should have been warning enough— _Ne, it looks like a storm’s coming, doesn’t it, Kuro-tan?_ —but it’s not until the first whisper of thunder, the first scatter of droplets that dampen the white of his collar gray, pricking in cold lines down the back of his neck, that he turns bloodish eyes behind them to see the sky closing in.

(It’s more than that, though—he’s tasted rain enough times to know its scent, to feel when the wind carried a storm with it; _this_ feels like something else, entirely, a shivering stillness that climbs down each notch of tensing spine and curls tight into his legs, raven brows knitted firm as his thumb lingers over braided hilt.)

“I _told_ you!” the mage wails, clapping the paper bag of spare parchment he had insisted on purchasing for new menu designs flat to his golden crown as raindrops splatter into quick crescendos upon the pavement, the humid tang of petrichor a sudden thing on their noses. “Here I gave plenty of reasons to leave early—we’re going to get _soaked_ —”

“Shut it,” Kurogane hisses, commonplace enough to be nothing more than his usual scolding, though urgency lingers still in the bite of it, his eyes fixed firm on the stretch of dimlit street behind.

“—which means I’ll have to wait for these clothes to dry out _again_ ,” babbles Fai still, steps scuffing with childish urgency even through the audible hobble of one ankle, still bandaged beneath cuffed slacks (it’s enough of a thing, small as it is, to pull the mask down enough for a grumble to sneak into the lilt of that voice, something cursing and sneerish and so _unlike_ him that, had circumstances been different, Kurogane may have let himself stare openly in something frighteningly close to fondness; as it is, the sound only curls the knot of apprehension deeper between his lungs, sends his brow wrinkling tighter as he grits one foot into a weighted angle beneath him, palm hovering above the coolness of Souhi’s hilt in wait). “And gods know that’ll take long enough—we’ll have to have Mokona figure out how to work those odd little fans, again—”

“I said _shut it_ ,” barks Kurogane again, and this time it’s sharpness is enough to send that blond head twisting, words dying half-finished on his tongue. Speckling drops melt into a quiet hush, dripping down the line of his temple; he can feel the heat of those otherworldly eyes for a long moment, fixed startled and silent on the path that stretches beyond his shoulder (and Kurogane _knows_ , even if the bastard has gone to such lengths to deny it, that whatever magic buried beneath the pulse of that blood can feel it, too, the twist of the air an unnatural breath through the stillness of his lungs).

“Kuro—?” Fai starts, almost too quiet to be heard beneath the pattering on paper above him, but whatever name he had been ready to concoct hangs unfinished as the pulse of the silence between them draws thin, like a line pulled taut. There’s a ghost of blurred shadows, a flicker of movement too abnormal to be anything else beneath the haze of lamplight, and the first hiss of smoke that curls where rain scatters through skin unseen is enough for that quiet to break, sharp as the steel that sings clear where it jumps beneath the jerk of a ridged thumb.

(He had stood his ground before—blade broken and breath bated, that blond head hung and limbs splayed, anger coming hellish and _desperate_ to shove life back into hands that had so easily let it slip away—but now he can’t trust those eyes at his back, can’t guarantee the mage will do a damn _thing_ , and the gnaw of it turns blistering as he whitens his knuckles over the bite of braided silk, grits jaw tight in the face of the first shiverish, gutting roar.)

“ _Shit_.”

He doesn’t have time to think it through. Souhi rings back into its sheath like a brick dropped, and with his _geta_ scraping firm against the cobbles, Kurogane _runs_.

(The shock that pulls crystalline eyes wide almost makes his blood boil— _almost_ —yet the splay of his fingers are already sent wide, a knifing brand where they latch onto willowy elbow through dampened cloth into a tight, burning _tug_.)

“ _Move_!” Kurogane roars, and beneath the drag of his palm, Fai jolts, its heat a vicious lurch forward that sends him stumbling; the paper bag at his head slings into a wet heap beneath the shadows as he clambers forward, as full-speed as he can. Bloody eyes are thrown behind them as the tearing roar of their pursuers drive closer—a great, billowing storm of glossy shapes that writhe snakish and screeching—and he’s half-aware of thin palms slapping against the wet grit of an alley corner to push through its shadows, the stutter of his breath on his heels like a chasing beast.

He doesn’t have to spare a second glance to know the rain has done nothing to throw off their scent—the warping hiss of _demon, death, dark_ clings to the air behind him as one clawed limb cracks upon the brick hard enough to tear the grouting, a thunderous growl splitting the air that sends his hackles high as he clatters after the silverish glow of fair head into the open.

(The scatter of that hushed breath, heels clipping sharp down uneven pavement, is testimony enough that the mage is already tiring out, and Kurogane knows they can sense it; he can feel the pulsing, surging tide of the auras behind shift seamless from pursuing to _predator_ , the heave of air through inhuman lungs a guttural, hissing taste that marks them both.)

“Why aren’t you _fighting_?!” yells something that could be Fai’s voice, were it not for the breathless huff of it that stings with something too raw to be teasing; pale fingers scrape over the edges of the alley’s mouth as they spill into the light of the next street, and the hitch in the mage’s breath as the adrenaline rush fades to searing pain comes too loud, too _real_ (not now, not _now_ )—

His hand is already braced upon Souhi’s hilt as he sinks his weight into the twist of one ankle, scraping hard to a stop against the wobble of wet stone, just as the dreading surge of foul breath and snaring jaws spill open through the shadows.

There’s no time for him to bite back.

The growl that sears through his teeth is a feral thing as he draws blade from sheath in one deadly _skkrink_ — _I could ask the same of you!_ burns venomous and unvoiced in this throat, only a passing thought, because the tingling numbness of a kill has already chased up his limbs (cheek splattered with wet heat; snarl awash in a haunting, vibrant _blue_ ).

The rain turns black blood to melted ink, washed quick into puddles of muddied gray beneath his feet, and when eyes the color of newborn lava gleam down at him from a towering loom of four men’s worth, Kurogane feels his breath flutter to stone. There’s more than one—four, at least, all counted with a single glance (three crawling before him, one climbing above, houndsteeth bared wide where they point with clear intention towards the aura of magic beneath)—and between the hush of noise around them, the puncture of their claws through crackling stone sounds like little more than child’s whispers.

(He knows he could cut them all down in a heartbeat and walk away unscathed, enough experience swinging steel giving him confidence in that alone—but it’s not fear that sends his lip twitching, teeth bared where they grind into a flex of muscle over sharp cheek; it’s the _knowing_ , drummed fast and infuriated beneath his breast, that the mage will not walk out of this alive even if he does, even if he _is_ quick enough.

It feels like shame, when it knots into his gut; burns with something like betrayal, when he presses into a slow step back, sizing up the _oni_ that bow around him—but there’s nothing else he will allow himself to do, not now.)

“Run,” Kurogane growls, knuckles whitened where they bare Souhi firm before him.

“I _can’t_ ,” Fai snaps back; even through the hiss of rain, the mage’s voice stings with an avoidance that sends his blood boiling, already pulled behind a layer of denial his patience was long since stripped from.

“Deal with your damn leg and _fucking run_!” Kurogane eases slow into another step back, the beasts before him billowing closer. “I don’t give a shit how you do it, but find some way to get us out of here, and _do it quick_ —”

“I _told you_ , I—”

The closest _oni_ howls, shattering and unearthly, and Kurogane sees the first dive of talons long before they strike; any room for further argument shreds between them as the smoking, skeletal bones of it tear stone from soil with the force of its weight plummeting to earth, Fai missing the blow by sheer luck alone as the gust of its fall knocks him off his feet.

(It’s the fourth time, now—the breath is torn from that lithe body, shoulder rolling hard into the wet cracks of the cobbles; he’ll be bruised come morning, just another list of grievances to be laid thick between them—and the drowning heat of something like rage is what sends Souhi’s blade striking hard enough to cleave ashen flesh from bone, the demon writhing in a great, shuddering shriek.)

They have a small, small window—molten eyes blurring wide through the blackness, twisting limbs shivering with the stillness before the pounce—and Kurogane snatches it, wrenching his sword from the meat of fizzling flesh to hang tight at his side as he steels his breath long enough to sprint to the white-gold slick of dripping hair and latch to the clearish droop of soaked sleeve beneath. He hauls the man up by the arm, tries with every frantic beat of sanity still within him to ignore the way the dead weight of his limbs calls back so hauntingly to that of another; his fingers do not let go as he yanks the mage into a skittering run behind him, even as wet fingers grapple at his sleeves, breathing shaking startled and shallow beneath the heave of that pale chest.

“You see anything?!” shouts Kurogane, muddled through the downpour. There’s another roar behind him, the air blurring dark around the line of his vision.

“A barrier,” Fai pants, fingers twisted to a knot within the folds of his sleeve as that large palm clings to his bicep still, forcing his steps slick and staggering. “ _There_ —”

The focus of his eyes is a clear path to follow, when Kurogane glances quick to him; the road splits up ahead, sprawling left and right into the shadows, the dead-end before them a distant, grayish heap through the dark, but he sets his sights on it like a lifeline, teeth gritting tight through the exertion that bleeds into his bones.

“You’re _sure_ —”

“ _Yes_!”

(He can feel pounding and pulse and copper and death, the weight of it all burying him beneath the memory, the _familiarity_ that tingles under his skin, harsh enough to make his head swim—but he has to stay focused, just for now, just for _now_ —)

It feels like floating, like dreaming, the disassociation of it all—all he can feel is throbbing pulse and bated breath and numb hand where he drags Fai forward, firmer still; that magic sings out to him, faint though it is, with the frantic surge of its release beneath those fair bones (cinnamon, and sage, and frigid, raw earth, rippling in waves of charoite with a strength clear enough to make his throat run dry beneath the raw _threat_ )—and through the nauseous blur of it, he clings to that invisible line like unspoken salvation, breath huffing steady and sharp as his hand twists tighter around the throb of lean muscle beneath, pushes _forward_.

“Kuro-sama?” Fai pants out, a hitch around the pain of bruising flesh or the startle of realization both; he offers no response (he doesn’t have _time_ ), just shoves the man beside him into a staggering sprint as Souhi flicks sharp within his palm, eyes cutting quick over his shoulder.

“Get across it!” he thunders, the coiling shadows that spasm at his heels driving high, “ _Go_!”

It feels like white noise, like _nothing_ —distantly, he hears the slipping clatter of the mage’s shoes; the echo of his breath, too-loud and too-quiet; the grating scrape of flesh on brick as his palms bloody themselves on wet wall with lungs raw and bones crumbling, all of it too far gone for Kurogane to linger on as the swooping vertigo of back being turned clashes into the searing grit of midnight bone on braced blade, sparks shearing bright as newborn flame. The scrape of his _geta_ turns screeching as he throws all of his weight into holding his ground, the air knocked from his chest against the slithering spear of three giants at once; Souhi _burns_ beneath the grit of his palms, a fireish dome that crackles electric with embers of cardamom and chalcanthite, and even that is not enough to keep him from being driven back against the slick of wet stone, body doubled beneath the strain that sends sweat dripping through the rainwater that spills over heaving breath and quivering jaw.

For one wretched, terrifying moment, he wonders if his recklessness will get him killed—the scent of decay suffocates him as the closest of gleaming teeth splits open, wide enough to swallow him whole—and the memory of bloodied scales and dragon-inked skin breaks him, tears a guttural sound inhuman enough to pass as demonic in and of itself as he drives glowing blade _down_ , the gleaming pulse of a barrier crossed barely registering through the viscous, vibrant _burn_ that coats his limbs.

He snags blue steel through the snout of that beast, tears it down through the roof of screeching mouth and squealish tongue alike, and the bloodied spray of it is already curling quick to smoke beneath the burn of magic that strips down towering beasts as quick as lighting through fresh leaves; Souhi thrusts through the gleaming river at his feet hard enough to crack stone, driving into wet earth deep enough to crumble him to one knee, its glow a harsh, splitting beacon that whistles free as the hiss of black blood fades slow into the air above him.

He can’t hear anything but the thunderous roar of his pulse, brow puddled heavy to the grit of his knuckles. His breath heaves, shakes; one scarred palm slips from braided hilt to clap hard to the cobbles at his knee, grappling heavily for balance.

( _They’re alive they’re alive he’s alive_ —)

“Kuro-sama?” chokes a small voice, somewhere not far behind him. He knows it as well as he knows the scent of mountain pine. The name attached to it is slower to crawl back to him.

“Kuro-sama,” that voice hisses again. It’s bitter, and desperate, and something else that he can’t place, the downpour hissing like acid around it.

“ _Kuro-sama_ ,” Fai repeats, echoing in its loudness as fair hands dive into his peripheral, shaking firm within the wrinkle of his shoulder—and beneath the tremor of it, Kurogane finally tethers down the unspoken flame in that voice ( _anger_ , bristling and burning and _powerless_ ), the realization of it coming through the haze of his regrounding like a piercing arrow. He rips his arm away from those hands, eyes staring through the hiss of rain beneath in a way still not fully cognizant as scarred palm tenses to push him slow back to his feet, slick blade dragged from the grit of broken cobbles around it.

“What the _hell_ were you thinking?” the mage presses, half-whispered through its bite. “We could’ve— _you_ could’ve—why didn’t you fight them off?!”

Kurogane shoves Souhi to its sheath tersely, swallowing down the dryness in his throat as bloodied fingers twitch through the numbness still within them.

“Are you even— _why did you do that_ —”

It’s a near-shout now, the mage’s voice cracking with something that betrays him; there’s no ounce of teasing smile in those words, nothing but raw _fire_ , a dangerous thing in its vulnerability—and the barest hint of that alone is enough to send the fury beneath Kurogane’s breast reigniting all the more as knuckles whiten upon still-clenched handle, words coming venomous through bared teeth.

“Try to tell me you would have done _shit_ ,” he seethes, and cuts eyes sharp as steel to the flicker of blue flame beside him. “Did _nothing_ I say to you get through your thick skull—”

“What?” Fai snaps, viciously flippant. Heat flares tense through dark nostrils as Kurogane stares him down, jaw tight enough to put an ache between his ears, and he _can’t_ —it’s something of a sick thrill, watching the inklings of a smile ripped clean off that thin mouth as he snares heavy palm into wet collar, the scuff of the mage’s shoes near-unheard as he twists that lean body to skitter hard to the grit of dark brick behind, the wet gleam of silken shoulders a prowling shadow as scarred palm hangs in a fisted weight at his side, whitened in its restraint.

“You wanna throw your life away so easily, fine,” Kurogane snarls, and the mage stares at him with a look so unreadable that the fire beneath the tense fall of his lungs only grows, raven brows drawn low. “But don’t you _dare_ put me in a position where I’m forced to throw away _mine_ —”

“I never _asked you to_ ,” Fai spits, head tipping back against the slick grouting of the brick as the fist at his collar yanks firmer.

“That’s my _point_!” Kurogane heaves out a rumbling breath, fingers buried deep enough through the wrinkle of wet linen to pull that golden head off the brick entirely, close enough to feel the shiverish puff of breath that scatters through clenching teeth against him. “You don’t _want_ it—no matter what it is, no matter what choice is given to you, you refuse them _all_ —and I’m not gonna sit around here, waiting for you to make up your _fucking_ mind on whether you’re gonna pick whatever exit seems the most convenient for you, when you’ve got other people waiting on you to _stand up and fight_ —”

“My,” hisses the mage, though the rasp of it tingles with such _hate_ that Kurogane feels his speech cut sharp to nothing, wet lashes blinking wide. “You’ve just got the world in the palm of your hand, don’t you?”

Dark knuckles twist tighter beneath the swallow of that pale throat, words coming harsh and weighted through the edge laid thick between them.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Said like someone who’s never had to carry the burden of another’s life,” grits Fai, a low growl, and the miserable _arrogance_ of it rips a tear of shock through stilled limbs quick enough that Kurogane can hardly care for the twist of pain on his face.

His blood boils beneath the sheer _wrongness_. But there’s nothing he can say, nothing he can _do_ , as the wave of trauma reignites in him, a trembling flare from tense shoulder to tight ankle; the rage bleeds in down a hellish surge, the tendons in dark wrist swelling firm as the muscle that cords from latched palm into clenched arm draws tighter still, his grip knifing deeper into wet cloth.

(He has to breathe hard to fight it down—and maybe the mage _knows_ , blank mouth still and golden lashes dripping low in the face of victory, the very thought of that alone doing enough to leave his bones quivering.)

“If you want to hit me so badly, do it,” Fai breathes, simmering and sharp beneath the glint of white teeth, and the heat in bloody eyes turns murderous, broken, _still_ —

(It’s not what he _wants_.

It’s not _who_ he wants—but the realization of it all twists heavily into him, like the pierce of a blade turned: that _this_ is the man beneath, bitter and brittle and bristling. Countless months had forced him to scavenge after the pieces left behind by whatever wretched soul lay trapped beneath the glass, but now that he _sees_ it—a naked thing, laid before them like a grievance of sins, unwanted and _unasked_ —he can do nothing but stare silent into the emptiness of eyes sharp as ice.)

“You pathetic bastard,” mutters Kurogane, after the weight of the silence between them has stretched thin. The hush of the downpour lingers, knifing cooly into his skin with every drop that slips fast and thick down the heat of it. “You’ve never felt it once in your life, have you?”

The ambiguity stings through his teeth (for _he_ knows, oh, he knows—he had not curled his fingers upon iron scales still-warm, hadn’t descended into madness and risen again, only to be told his life, his lingeage, his _love_ had meant nothing)—but it’s the startle of gold lashes that sends the knot beneath his breast tightening all the further, that makes his brow knit into something feral as blue eyes stare into him like a fox trapped, raw with a vulnerability he has seen few enough times on that fair face to know every instance by heart.

(It’s all the more confirmation, even with so little spoken, that he is _right_ —and that knowledge is almost worse, gnawing into a fierce, scalding throb within his bones, as he stands against the bitter breath of a man who couldn’t spell love if it was written for him.

The curl between his lungs isn’t supposed to _mean_ that, it was never meant to—it had been suspicion, and _distrust_ , and nothing else—but the whitening of his knuckles aches with something he cannot bring himself to admit, the grit of his teeth stinging with a desperation he had only felt once before, when broad back and inked arm had turned from him for the last time.)

Kurogane wrenches his fingers from wrinkled cloth none too gently, the thunder of his breath rippling from him like a roar just on the fringes of being voiced; the sound never comes, even still, yet the itch of his knuckles to crack to the brick behind that golden head hard enough to tear flesh lingers, sinking into a fist that shakes with such ferocity that he questions, idly, whether his bones will stay in tact.

The mage says nothing as he turns away, but the heat of that gaze lingers like a wound’s bite as he stalks numbly into the nearby alley, something like desolation in the claw of his steps, an echo of an infernal, long-buried wrath hovering just beneath the surface—and Kurogane cannot keep it closed, even as the uneven clack of those steps slowly follow in tow.

.:.

He can’t tell if he’s the one winning. He can’t tell if he’s the one _losing_.

He can’t tell anything at all, anymore.

(It’s not the same game they play—and he wonders, with a nauseous weight driving beneath his bones, if this was always what lay underneath—because now, it’s nothing about teasing, or resilience, or power.

Now, it’s about _control_.)

The itch to lash out, to tear, to destroy, to _descend_ was enough to leave him foggy-eyed and motionless some time ago, once the hinges had rattled shut behind him and the air had plunged into darkness, only the flicker of moonlight a chasing touch on his skin.

(It’s too much—it’s too _much_ , and under the weight of it all, he can’t breathe.

He misses them.)

He can’t remember when he fell—crumbled to the floorboards, back anchored to the wall, wrists pounding against his knees, head hung—only that he’s still here, still struggling to drag in even breath, still trying to blur out the image of broken body and hollow eyes and _red_ beneath the squeeze of his skin.

There’s a breeze rustling through the window, a whisper of cool air on his neck. It’s not much, but it’s _enough_ —a sign that he’s here, that he’s alone; that none of the sensation quivering still within tight limbs is there.

He heaves out air from his lungs in place of bile. Rests a clammy brow to the cross of his wrists, rocks himself a little.

He tries to remember what Tomoyo’s touch felt like.

He tries and tries and _tries_.

(He sees blue, instead.)

He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think at _all_ —but still, his mind chases, caught on the color of river ice and ocean shoals and midnight sky all at once. It’s not the person his thoughts cling to—though the wielder of those eyes hangs in the back of them, a silhouetted night terror of hate, horror, _want_ —it’s the _depth_ ; layers upon layers of meaning at once, smiling and sharp and distant and _lethal_.

He’s spent more than one early morning puzzling through the dark over the contradictions, the walls, all laid fine as silk and strong as steel. (If the bastard didn’t want to be near them, he didn’t _have_ to, no consequence made to the whole of them—or to himself, and whatever cage of unspoken motives he had locked himself in, for that matter).

But that was when it was only about _him_.

That was before he had crawled into the space of Kurogane’s mind, crafting a nest of obsession and longing both, and left him stripped to nothing beneath the emptiness left behind.

(It’s the first time in his life, since, that he’s felt such an intense need to guard, to _protect_ —not just the kids, or the _manjuu_ , or even the mage, himself—but whatever twisted, unspoken reality lay beneath the cut of that smile; whatever haunted soul had fixed itself to that body, with all the assumption that it had no right to live, at all.

The _mage_ doesn’t exist—that identity was left in the puddles behind them, something vile and broken put in its place—and now, _now_ Kurogane can’t ignore it.)

He doesn’t keep track of the time. He sits until the glimmer of the moonlight rises to piercing white, until the shadow of his shoulders are painted deep into the floorboards before him. He sits and he breathes and he shakes and he doesn’t _move_ (because if he moves, he will _kill_ , and the fear of that cripples him).

At some point, there is a glimmer of heat beside him. Through stinging eyes and knitted brow, he stares at it.

(Everything swims, and he can’t breathe, he _can’t_ —)

It’s the wrinkle of a paper bag, abandoned where it was shoved by kicking foot beneath his bedside. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with it, then, stinging with embarrassment or shame alike. Now, his fingers fall numb to the floorboards; scatter slow against the grit of their grain to crinkle heavily around it, the hum of power beneath a quiet thing.

His hands are shaking too much to even manage opening it, and it’s with a single flash of rage— _waiting_ , set free, only a moment—that paper is sent shredding into a vicious tear, its contents dumping upon the floor in a clattering heap between his feet.

He stares distantly at them. Beneath the moonlight, the matte of their beads gleam dully, wood turned to gray and stones whiteish in the lowlight. It’s the gemstone beneath that clings to his vision, glinting silverish and ice-like. His fingers sink down beneath the spread of his knees, fall heavily into the floor by his heels; its with brow tight and jaw tremoring that he pokes at the curve of one bead, brushes the callous of his finger gingerly over it.

( _There’s priest-blood in you_.)

He draws them slowly into his palm, a clittering trail spilling from the curve of his knuckles far past his calves when he shifts to brace heavy wrists to the firm bones of his knees once more. He toys with their chain loosely, a swallow caught in his throat, and tries to remember spring pilgrimages and robed monks and the smell of incense in the palace shrine; black silk and midnight meditation, the weight of a sword tied to his hip. A shaking breath slivers from his chest, slow as the memories that chase beneath his lashes.

He slides his thumb down to the first knot of horsehair, drawn thick in its repetition, and counts.

 _One_.

(In.)

 _Rin, Pyō, Tō, Sha, Kai, Jin, Retsu, Zai, Zen_.

(Out.)

His thumb circles over the next bead, throat bobbing firm, and then he breathes again.

 _Two_.

.:.

Sunlight chases across their shoulders in a wash of dying orange and red as they scuff through the pebbles onto the terrace. He follows the boy with steady steps and steady eyes, the door creaking open under the twist of one sluggish hand, the clump of tired boots falling after.

(Training hasn’t been easy on him, an intensity the kid himself had demanded, after seeing death come so close to his own heels. Kurogane wasn’t going to be the one to deny him, but _still_ —)

“You should rest.”

Syaoran blinks up at him, hands stilled beneath the twist of Hien’s tassels. There’s a moment, stubbornness flickering in those eyes (because the boy’s _exhausted_ , and he knows it, but the desire to press, to improve, to stay _strong_ still burns bright—and, for not the first time, Kurogane’s chest twists in the face of it), but, gradually, he submits, sigh pressed short and heavy through his teeth.

“Alright,” he murmurs, and then smiles, “But I’ll be ready to start again, tomorrow morning.”

“As you should be,” Kurogane grumbles, a twitch at his mouth. He nudges past the boy to kick off his own shoes and pad with heavy steps straight for the bar, trying to ignore the bottle with small glass already set out in expectation.

“Do you—do you think I’m getting better?”

He stills, at that.

He turns slow to the foyer, where hazel eyes flicker from the grain of the flooring to his own, a glimmer of anticipation, hope, doubt, fear all muddled within them. Syaoran flushes pink then, a sudden blur across his skin.

“I—I mean,” he blurts, shoulders pitching tight, “Well, I—not that—I—”

There’s a jerk of his eyes to the side, and then a stumbling of that voice entirely, caught sight of something quick enough to pull him motionless; he gestures frantic, an odd little jerk of his fingers, and Kurogane has half a mind to look, except he already _knows_ (he’d seen the droop of blond head before, an absent thing on the outskirts of his vision).

“Fai-san’s asleep,” Syaoran whispers then, and makes an apologetic bumble of bracing Hien quiet as he can as he motions blindly towards the stairs, an indicator for him to flee before any wrath is set upon him (the mage could be a fearsome thing in his own right, especially when groggy-eyed and thin-mouthed after waking unwanted). Kurogane sends his brows raising, a small enough acknowledgement as he squeaks open black-labeled bottle into a glug of an overfilled shot glass, and the boy’s steps begin a cautious creak up the staircase.

“You’re strong, already,” he mutters, after a moment. Through the silence, the words echo like thunder, the whisper of the stairs drawn silent. Kurogane glances up to the shadow of the bannisters, not having to see the tilt of the boy’s head, turned quick away, to know those ears are hanging to every word. “Fighting isn’t about improving; it’s about harnessing what you’ve already got. You don’t need me, to earn that.”

Syaoran, steps squeaked in a half-press, makes a quiet little noise at that, head jerked into a bow, and climbs slowly up the last ledges to the hall.

(It aches deep within him, still, how much the taste of those words linger with the voice of another. It ripples down his skin uncomfortably, a tightening between his lungs, as though _he_ shouldn’t be the one saying them—knuckles drawing white around the cool grit of carved glass, eyes falling absent to the wrinkle of his sleeve, the speckling of scars over his forearm painted on skin unmarked—and he knocks the liquor back in one swallow, lip twitching against the burn of it.)

The glass is left empty, the bottle taken by the neck instead. It’s with some shred of mind that Kurogane questions retreating to closed doors and silent rooms, himself (though shortened-breath and shaking limb in the dark are still far too fresh, the memory of that alone enough to push him away); he chooses the couch instead, approached slow beneath the first swallow of tipped mouth, his eyes caught on broad shoulder and open collar and crossed thigh and a golden bottle clung loosely between fair fingers.

(He ignores the familiarity of the label, ignores that its contents are near-empty, eyes darting quick away.)

“How long you gonna keep up the opossum act?” Kurogane mutters, an arch in his brow as he sinks heavily to the cushions. There’s a tick in thin mouth, a rustle of breath from a sharp nose.

“You always do see through me,” comes a purr of a murmur—and it is a sleep-riddled thing, still, even though its masquerading; Fai blinks open long lashes slowly, eyes slipping to furrowing brow and tensing jaw beside him. “Can’t blame me for not wanting to interrupt the moment, can you?”

“Tche.” Kurogane takes another swing, swallowing firm through its dryness. “Eavesdropping, more like.”

“ _Ah_ , so Kuro-shy just doesn’t want to reveal his sentimental side.” Fai grins, slow and feline and _knowing_ , lifting his own bottle to his mouth into a long sip. “Mh—why am I surprised,” he continues, and rests his head back on the cushions, the curve of the glass a lazy twirl through his fingers. “We’re all hiding away in our own ways, aren’t we?”

Kurogane stares forward, muscle flaring small in his cheek.

“Some of us, more than most,” he rumbles, eyes cutting slow to the man beside him. The curve of that smile stays put as blond head tilts, a scattering of fringe that curls messily about his skin; those eyes shift to him, with a cold, knifing _heat_ that he can’t put into words, enough intensity bled through that stare to make his throat stutter into a swallow, small as it is, before his own tear away to hover somewhere at the back wall, _shochu_ lifted numbly to his lips again.

“For their own reasons, I’m sure,” continues the mage—but it’s _low_ , and steady, and that lilt is gone, even beneath the crease of that smirk rolling farther on one side.

(It’s a challenge.

It’s a _threat_.)

Kurogane’s fingers twitch around the neck of his bottle, drawn slow from the part of his mouth. He doesn't give any thought to the burn that lingers on the curve of it.

“If you’re gonna say something, _say_ _it_ ,” he bites out, impatient (because the shiver at his back isn’t something he can deal with, and the sting of those eyes isn’t something he can face—not like this, not with whatever desperation coiling in his gut still a marker of too many close calls, too many things he can’t _understand_ ).

Fai laughs clean in the face of it, head shaking and turned away in the quiet that follows.

“Listen to us,” he chuckles then, bitter and bright and _deadly_ , swallowed down slow through his next drink, “Always talking through the lines. It’s almost as if you _want_ to have me figured out, Kuro-sama.”

Kurogane nearly drops his bottle, clenched tight enough to narrowly miss knocking teeth. The weight beside him leaves into a stutter of steps, swaying long-legged and hand-pocketed towards the counter, empty bottle of _sake_ clunked firm to its surface.

There’s a moment—silent, tense, heart fumbling into a quickened thud—that he waits, dark brows curling low as that lithe back stays to him. Fair fingers twitch over the flat of wood beneath, nails sliding slow against skin, pondering; Kurogane stares from bandaged ankle to lean thigh to unbuttoned cufflink, trying to pick up any flicker of motion, to piece together whatever storm of thoughts is brewing behind the twitch of that unseen mouth, jerked to still silence as those shoulders roll through small knots of muscle and bone.

“Seems I’m all out of drink,” Fai laments, a half-sigh. “And I’m not _nearly_ a drunk as I want to be.”

He turns, a slow thing, to stride with steps quiet and measured back towards the couch (but it feels a hell lot more like a _stalk_ , the stare of those eyes nothing friendly even beneath the slant of that smile, passive as it is small). Kurogane waits and Kurogane swallows and Kurogane _stares_ when those feet pad to a stop before him, and Fai bends into a smooth bow of motion, hand slipping forward to snare around the bottle beneath his palm; it’s with some hesitation that he flinches when it’s yanked back, his fingers a numb weight before the _shochu_ is tugged firmly from his hand, left to gape dumbly before him.

Fai stares him down like a speck beneath a god, like _prey_ , bottle lifted to linger at the puff of his breath before his thumb tips glass back into a kiss against parting lips, throat rippling into a slow swallow—one, then two (liquor beaded at his lips, dripping across the line of sharp jaw into the dip of his neck), then three. He slips the glass back with a husk of breath, knuckles smearing slow to glistening line at his chin, and then sloshes the bottle to a hang in a numb weight at his side, fingers gritting slow against the clench of it.

“Well?” says the mage, says someone who Kurogane knows with every visceral pound of his heart and yet does not know at _all_ , “If you’re so set on figuring me out, then ask away, Kuro-sama.”

(It’s an opportunity he could have gotten on his knees and begged for, if he’d had the chance—something he would have wrung out of that ghoulish smile, himself, if self-restraint hadn’t been a feral weight in his limbs—but _now_ (given freely, given like a _trap_ , eyes haunting and sharp and smile gone), he can’t say a damn word.)

Kurogane can feel the crease deepening in his brow, can feel the confusion bubble dazed and dangerous to the surface (even as his heart thunders, his lungs stiffen), his knuckles rasping to the cushions beneath.

“Nothing?” prods on Fai, one golden brow perking slight. “What happened to Kuro-fire from before? Did the rain wash you out?”

(It wasn’t fire. It was _hell_. And he almost wants to strangle the bastard, for even daring to suggest that flare of rage had been only that.)

“What made you crack?” Kurogane says finally, low with an edge that bleeds with too much with so little space between them. “Figured you’d be more…resilient than this.”

“ _Resilient_ ,” Fai parrots, and laughs, a low, ugly thing. “That’s a way to put it.”

“You wouldn’t come crying to me, if you didn’t _want_ _it_ ,” Kurogane snaps, and as soon as the words are spoken, he knows he’s stepped too far; something splits in that face, smile faltering before it falls entirely, eyes drawn steady as an arrow notched—and beneath the shift, he feels chained in place, throat shivering into a sharp flutter beneath the glimmer of heat in ice-blue.

There’s silence, the air too tight (Kurogane fights to dampen the quickening of his lungs, clenches his fingers into his palms as those eyes _devour_ him, chasing from parted knee to the tense line of his mouth, the drag of it like the shiver of a blade’s touch).

“Oh, you beautiful fool of a man,” Fai whispers, teasing with the bottle in his hand absently, “There are several things I _want_.” Kurogane stares at him, eyes jumping, uncontrolled, to the part of his collar, the twist of his fingers around warm glass, the clench of sharp jaw, the lower of gold lashes—his breath stutters, and its sound clatters through the stillness like the shattering of glass (obvious and loud and clearly heard, if the bloom of skyish eyes to sapphire is anything to go by). The bottle is lifted to parting mouth again, swigged fast and swallowed hard, the heat of that gaze still clung to bloody-brown. “Doesn’t mean a damn thing, whether I get it or not—but that doesn’t mean I still don’t _want_ it.”

Words hang on the back of Kurogane’s tongue, hard enough to make his head swim.

( _Then take it_.)

Fai licks his lips, thumb circling absent over the mouth of the bottle before he hums, smiles sharp and small.

“Seems I’ve taken your drink from you,” he breathes, and moves _closer_ (thigh raising to send one knee bruising into the space between black silk, his other hand coming to sink into the cushions above the tensing line of white shoulder). “How rude of me.”

The heel of the bottle clunks into a dull weight against Kurogane’s chest, left heavy in the space between them; beneath the burn of those eyes, his lungs sting, his pulse _drums_ , hands knocking clumsy to rip the bottle away.

“Not the first time,” he grits, with a voice too hoarse. It’s wrestled down quick, snared slow into the husk of his normal burr (if only slightly breathless), but still, the mage _knows_ —fair head tilts further, the bend of his elbow bringing him closer into the space cleared for him—and Kurogane swallows down a throat abruptly too dry. It’s a thoughtless thing, the rasp of silk where his thighs draw wider beneath the slide of that knee, its twin raising to plant slow into the space by his hip.

(It would be far too _easy_ , to send his fingers up the line of that thigh and haul this man closer.

It’s with some frightening indecision that he debates even doing so.)

“And certainly not the last,” says the mage, fingers gliding up the buttons of his undershirt to pluck lightly at his collar, dark neck jerking back slightly at even the _hint_. “Although, your…little gift was a _dream_.” (And Kurogane can taste it on his breath, sweet and floral and sharp where it puffs over his skin, a slow thing as his head sinks heavily into the cushions). “Kuro-puppy certainly has good taste—”

“ _Don’t_ you even start,” he hisses, harsh in its quickness, even through the stumbling flutter of his lungs (because those eyes are so close, and that lean body _looms_ , a strong, powerful thing—even with the litheness in his limbs; even though he’d barely _touched_ him).

“You like it,” gloats the man above him, eyes crinkling in a way that could almost be charming ( _almost_ , if he wasn’t so goddamn proud of it; Kurogane bristles, burns red, eyes snapping firm away).

“No I _don’t_ ,” he barks, once the air rushes back to him. There’s far more than that waiting on his tongue, already set to fire beneath the swell of his breath, the click of his teeth, but he can’t get it out; the mage sinks forward, sinks _down_ , scrawny hips a warm weight on his thigh as his thumb rasps over the first button of short collar, his other hand curling warm to the cushions above.

“You _like_ it,” whispers Fai, dangerously, _dangerously_ close—Kurogane can’t move, can’t think, his head tilting back, _back_ as those shoulders roll closer, the heat of that breath scattering through his own.

(His fingers twitch upon the cushions and his arms _ache_ , the desire to reach out, touch, _feel_ a suffocating thing—but even still, even with so little left between them, he knows some shred of this still clings to the game they play; that every move has been carried out strategically, every opening laid with purpose—and if he touches, if he _gives_ , he’ll be the one ensnared.)

Fai knows it, too. Even through the cloud of his vision, the stutter of his breath, Kurogane can see it—there’s something like distain in the prick of that thin mouth, an ache in the heat of blue eyes that’s as viciously wanting, _claiming_ , as it is denying—and all it takes is a breath, slithering slow from the flutter of that lean chest, for that closeness to be shredded again, subtle as it is.

“I,” rasps Fai, the quiver of his breath sending the unkempt slicks of raven hair over furrowing brow into a short ripple, “Oh, I _shouldn’t_.” His fingers smooth over buttoned collar to slip _in_ , to slip _up_ , fingertips cool and deliciously rough where they scatter over the base of pounding neck. “I really, really shouldn’t—but I just—” His head tips lower, a drowsy rasp of skin where his temple rolls into Kurogane’s own, the brush of their noses not a gentle thing in the slightest (and he can’t _breathe_ , stripped to nothing but raw impulse as his mouth falls open against the heat of that breath, knees jolting tense against the weight above him.)

That mouth is so close—burning, and breathless, and branding where it sinks into the first press—and Kurogane’s brow wrinkles tighter ( _what the hell is he doing?_ ), midnight lashes hung just a breath short of closed (blue _,_ blue _, blue_ ), lips stuttering farther with the roll of his neck (godsplease _yes_ —)

Fai sways, cheek to ear to neck, the burn of his lips ripping a shiver violent as it is sudden down Kurogane’s spine as fair head puddles into the dip of one broad shoulder, breath slithering in its slowness.

(He has to wrestle down the groan in his throat; has to fight down the jerk of protest that aches within his chest, thighs quivering tight with restraint.)

“Gods, I want to know you,” Fai murmurs, and it sounds like a confession (like something that should be whispered into interrogative rooms behind panels of double-sided glass—not like _this_ ). The rasp of scarred skin over dark throat slips higher, following shuddering swallow up to flutter over the tilt of firm jaw, a gentle caress of thumb on bone; shivers break across Kurogane’s skin, neck to ankle, as that head turns in to nuzzle in something close enough to a daze, breath washing soft and slow across his skin (his knuckles whiten, his pulse _pounds_ , audible and clearly felt beneath the brush of parting lips). “I want to know what you taste like,” Fai husks, and Kurogane gives up on holding his head up entirely, breath weaseling into a hoarse pant, “I want to know what you _sound_ like. I want every piece of you I can get—but if I—”

(There’s a flicker of motion, the hand at clenching jaw smoothing slow down to palm over burning collar to pluck the first bead of linen button open, lips dragging slow over the pound of tendon before parting open into a small kiss, open and _burning_ and Kurogane—

Kurogane breaks.)

“—if I _do_ ,” rasps Fai, when scarred palm drags up the line of centered thigh to dimple into a firm hold (almost wide enough to span the whole half of muscle beneath, biting in its heat, the husk of his breath ripped to a stutter when knee is tugged from between spread thighs to rasp over silken hip); the heat of his lips hover, an aching chase before sinking down again into a feverish press, the hand in the cushions above them palming down heaving chest over molten silks to fall into the crease of black lap. “—if I do, I’ll—”

Kurogane almost whimpers, a growling, half-formed thing, at how fluidly the fingers at his collar tear through buttons one-handed, twisting curls of each to bare collar, sternum, skin burning and shiverish beneath the first gliding touch—and it’s only once his other hand has snaked over lean thigh, once that mouth has started weaving from neck to collarbone, breath coming short and sharp beneath, that the man above him stills.

It’s a slow thing, when the thunderous pound of his heart fades enough to let him _listen_ —because it’s too silent, and he can barely hear the mage breathe—and when his eyes crack open beneath the furrow of his brow, jolting quick over the hazy glow of lamplight over the bar and the dark that settles around them and the stark lines of white shirt before him that he looks up, blue eyes drawn cold and still on his chest.

(It takes him a moment, a husk of _Wh—?_ already hanging behind his teeth, but realization strikes slowly on _what_ Fai is looking at; the weight of them roll warm and heavy with the stutter of his breath, the sing of their power a forgotten thing, but no doubt felt now by the magic kept under careful wraps above.)

He can’t understand the look in those eyes—can’t fathom _what_ the mage sees, rather than just a string of beads—but it’s enough to leave the rawness of that gaze empty in their stillness, golden brow creased just slight at a furrow.

Fai rebuttons his shirt slowly, all haste gone from him, throat rippling into a tight swallow.

“I can’t,” he starts, hitched through his teeth. “I can’t do this, to you.”

Fair fingers linger, still, about the curve of his collar, and the dizzying blur of a thousand thoughts behind those eyes is enough to leave Kurogane’s touch firm on his thighs, even when he shifts to draw away.

“What—” (His voice sounds _destroyed_ , and his skin burns against the realization of it, words coughing quick into something close enough to normal.) “What’s wrong?”

Fai says nothing, just stares mutely at his collar still. There’s no heat left, no blinding rush for touch, for _anything_ ; it’s just a numb silence, now, and Kurogane can barely huff out a low _Hey_ before that blond head is sinking, puddled slow into the warmth of his chest.

(It feels like a goodbye. Like watching lips pressed to onyx hair for the last time.

Kurogane does not want to think about what that means.

He doesn’t even want to think, at _all_.)

“Oi,” he tries again, a soft rasp through the bend of his shoulders, the shift in his hips, head tilting to try and catch a glimpse of whatever he can. One palm slides from the stillness of spread thigh to rest heavily over slumped shoulder, drawn on its own into the soft heat of bared nape, and beneath its weight, Fai _melts_.

It only lasts a moment—breath sliding slow from beneath the heat of his hand, head tumbling into a closer press as his fingers chase, hesitant, to smooth through tangled wisps of white-gold—before the mage draws away, sniffed short and eyes averted, leaving Kurogane motionless beneath the loss of his heat as he stands.

“You should go to bed,” Fai whispers, a muted thing, even when Kurogane moves to follow him, arms bracing heavily to his knees. It should have been reason enough for the idiot to expect the touch that blurs when he turns to walk away, scarred palm clasping slow around the bend of willowy wrist, but the shock that swings back under the flutter of pale fringe still ties a knot beneath Kurogane’s breast.

“ _Mage_ ,” he huffs, too many invitations clattering through the stumble of that one sound ( _Stay here, talk to me, come to bed, it’s alright_ )—and beneath all of them, those bluish eyes blow wide as summer moons, hand tremoring faint beneath the grit of his touch.

Fai pulls away, a fluid thing.

“I _can’t_ do this,” he hisses, sternly, and tucks his hand quick into his pocket. It’s too quick, when he turns; too fast, when his steps carry him away—but before Kurogane can get another word out, he’s already creaked up the stairs, the echo of a door pulled swift shut only half-registering.

He stares into the stillness, eyes flicking from the stairwell to the bar to the floor beneath the wrinkle of his brow. He stares and he sits and he drags in a slow breath, the quiet too much under his skin, and then he stands.

Kurogane snatches the half-empty bottle of _shochu_ from the couch, walks with numb steps to the bar to flicker the glow of lamplight into blackness, and climbs the stairs stiffly to his room.

In the dark, he sits, and he drinks, and he does not sleep.

.:.

It’s not often that he prays.

Before, it had been in empty rooms, skinny palms pressed to polished wood as he bent his head to let his brow kiss the floorboards, silent in a reverence for things he was still too young to understand.

In his growth, it became whispers under his breath, following bowed head and still lungs, when the touch of sunrise had only brushed his shoulders; a moment of calm, before the storm.

It’s nothing like that, now.

Now, he doesn’t pray for peace, or health, or even _silence_. Now, his head slumps beneath the weight of it, fingers numb on his knees; now, he prays out of desperation, begs for guidance into territory he had forced himself away from ever crossing before—only now he’s caught up to his waist, and he doesn’t know what to _do_.

(He doesn’t know if he can call it love. He doesn’t know what to call any of it.

He’d left a child in an unburied grave, somewhere beneath the ashes of that living hell. He’d built a man in its place; poured his life into a mistress who kept his bloodthirst under wraps; denied that any of the scars unseen that marked him ever came from outside those palace gates.

He can’t deny them anymore, now.)

“I’m not _you_ ,” Kurogane spits, to no one at all, the haze of moonlight through the trees only a faint light where it speckles to the terrace at his feet.

(He’d never made it a habit of speaking to the dead. He had, in fact, spent most of his youth denying the dead had even existed, to begin with.

Remembering was too painful.)

“I don’t know how to be,” he continues, hoarse in its muttering, and clenches his fingers firm to the bend of bone beneath. There’s no etching of scales or dragonfang on his skin, when his eyes fall; no glint of silver on his hilt, where Souhi lays abandoned. Still, the ache in his chest doesn’t fade. “I don’t know _what_ to be.”

(A lover, father, friend?

Nothing?

 _Everything_?)

He can’t care for what parallels he may draw to himself, in the silence. None of them feel _right_ ; he is not sneerish grins; not warm eyes, or guiding touch; not summer paths and rippling cape— _he_ is blood, and black, and fire, and death.

(He’s never been anything else.)

Kurogane feels the familiar clench of terror in his throat, the scent of ash and decay flaring beneath the pound of his pulse in an uncontrollable surge. He squeezes his eyes shut against the swell of it, breathes heavy into the stillness. It’s a subconscious thing, when one hand seeks out the cold weight strung around his neck; he curls the beads into a slow knot around the twist of his fingers, rolls their grit between his knuckles slowly, air scattering through parting lips.

(He was better at controlling this, before.)

It’s after a few moments—the night air cool, crickets chirping dully in the distance—that he feels the presence of another, steps hushing quiet on the floorboards. There’s a flicker of light, clicked carefully on and then off, before the _shoji_ is slid open, and Kurogane slides his hand back to his knee as bare feet pad into the moonlight, their stride drawn quick into a faltering stop.

“Kurogane-san?” whispers a high voice, and he turns his head to see, of the whole lot of them, the _princess_ , emerald eyes blinking wide. “I didn’t know you were out here.”

There’s an unspoken question; a quiet _Why?_

“It’s late,” is what he says instead, brow wrinkling in confusion at her. The girl flusters, staring quick into the tea she cradles between her hands.

“I…couldn’t sleep,” she murmurs. There’s a small smile at her lips, bittersweet though it is. “It’s…it’s funny—I’m always the one going off and sleeping, but then…when I _am_ awake, it’s usually…” She shrugs, an unspoken explanation, and Kurogane quiets beneath the weight such a soft thing carries.

“Does it happen often?” he mutters. The girl takes a slow sip of her tea (chamomile, its faint sweetness blowing light through the air) and shrugs again.

“Not—not _often_ , but…” She looks out at the hush of leaves through the trees, their courtyard painted in a dark wash of blue. “I don’t mind it, really,” she continues, “Everything is so quiet. It’s nice.”

Kurogane looks forward, a twitch in his brow.

“Am I bothering you?” the girl blurts then, a pitch higher in its nervousness, and he gives a quick shake of his head, any tension buzzing through that small spine fading fast as the hush of her breath. She sinks to her knees in a bumble of tangled limbs, unraveled neatly to lean on her hip, ankles tucked at her side.

“I’m usually up,” Kurogane says, somewhere through the slow lax in his lungs, staring still at the whisper of wind through the grass. “If, y’know. If no one else is.”

(There’s a twitch in his fingers, a rustle in his breath, fought down to stay still. He wonders if she catches it when she turns his way, the words taking too long to come to her.)

“I had a dream about my brother,” Sakura whispers, turning her tea slowly within her hands. “It’s been so long since I’ve thought about him—but it felt—it felt like I really _knew_ him, this time.” She smiles, lifting her cup into a slow sip. “But I still…get this feeling, like I don’t know how to feel about it. Like I really don’t know him, you know? All these holes, they…they keep me up, sometimes.” One pinkish hand plops to the floorboards to let her weight sink into it, her shoulders shifting. “So, anyway,” she says, and chuckles, “That’s why _I’m_ awake.”

He waits for those eyes to turn to him. It feels like butterfly’s wings, when they do.

“What about you?” she asks, too gentle through the quiet.

Kurogane swallows, furrow a slow thing to knit into his brow. It’s stubbornness, that keeps his mouth shut; bitterness, that ties a knot in his chest. Still, he doesn’t know how to say _anything_.

“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” Sakura says quickly, turning back to her cup in a flutter of honeyed hair. “But, you know, if—if you want to, you don’t have to feel shy, with me. I know Fai-san, and Moko-chan, and Syao-kun all have their, um…own ways, I guess.”

He snorts, at that. It’s a damn understatement, at best.

“What?” Her voice pitches in a chuckle, almost with an air of petulance, and Kurogane shakes his head.

“They’ve each got their own maze, if that’s what you mean,” he grumbles. “Can’t say a word to the _manjuu_ , if there isn’t food involved.”

Sakura bursts into a bright laugh at that, muffled quick behind her knuckles.

“Moko-chan took the largest plate the other night, didn’t she?” she giggles.

“Uh, yeah,” Kurogane grits, deadpanned.

“I think that was meant for you.”

“Trust me, the damn thing knew.”

The princess laughs again, soft and snorting, and it’s enough to pull a twitch in his mouth. She sips her tea quietly through the flutter of it, growing silent again, before turning back to him with eyes thoughtful and only somewhat forlorn.

“Though, I think you and Syaoran-kun can speak well together.” She smiles then, gentle even still. “He really admires you. And Moko-chan _loves_ you.”

“Tche.”

(He would die before he admitted the bun had grown on him, too.)

“And Fai-san…I’m not sure what it is, but Fai-san just seems… _there_ , with you.” He raises a dark brow, turning a strange look towards her, and the girl flaps her hands quickly, nearly spilling her tea. “I-I mean, just…he’s always there, you know—Fai-san’s so _warm_ , with everyone, he just—I don’t know, he _fills_ a room—but, it’s…different. I don’t really…know how to describe it.”

The trailing of her voice fades into a hush of a murmur, and Kurogane stares forward again, a tick in his cheek that pulls his brows low.

“It’s not fair to you, to leave yourself outta that,” he burrs, “You’re just as much a factor in all of it.”

Sakura stares at her feet with wide eyes, cheeks abruptly pink. He can feel the warmth of that gaze flit from his cheek back to the courtyard, quick as lightning, another sip of her tea swallowed quietly.

“Then, you too, Kurogane-san,” she says, and turns back to him with a little smile. “I don’t know what it is, either, but you…always know what to say.”

(So had his father, wisened with enough years to know exactly what words to pull out, when the time called for them; who never shied from laying heavy palm over pulsing brow, a toughened indicator to _Calm down, quiet_ , when the itch to lash out had tingled under his bones.)

“It’s just—it’s nice, is all,” Sakura babbles on, softened still. “I feel like I can always talk to you.”

Kurogane blinks forward, then down, then away, a sting in his cheeks he knows has risen clear to the surface. He clears his throat, brow drawing slow at a furrow.

“Hn.”

“I mean it!” the princess presses, with an inkling of a giggle, before she takes another sip. “But, I guess we…all want someone to talk to sometimes, you know?”

(She was wise for her years, a nature brought out only in the smallest of circumstances, but powerful all the same.

It’s the same wiseness he found in eyes deep as moonlit shoals; the same youth that had so tenderly held the cave of his shoulders, even with the strength of priest-blood a haunting, visceral _power_ through his flesh.)

“If…you don’t mind me asking,” Sakura says then, the tone of her voice a clear shift in direction, and Kurogane glances over at her, the line of her vision a clean thread to where the ghost of his mistress’s spell had for so long marked him. “Can—can I?”

She points a finger gently, a timid gesture, and it’s only with a slight wrinkle in his brow and eyes cutting down that he pieces it together. He swallows as he lifts his palm from his knee, carried slow to hover across his lap where she reaches both hands out to meet it, her tea set in a gentle clunk on the floorboards.

“I’ve always…noticed, but I never asked,” she whispers, fingertips a careful touch where they raise to cradle his knuckles. Her thumbs press lightly over the creases of his palm, just on the outskirts of the pearlish line that splits through its center. “What, um…what happened…?”

Kurogane’s gaze flickers from the press of her hand to the slow raise of her own, quick to be cut away beneath the tense of muscle around his jaw.

(He has enough reason to rip his hand away, stalk inside and _flee_ , not having to say a word.

He has just enough reason to stay.)

“My… _miko_ ,” he mutters, throat cleared slow, “The _hime_ , she…they all found me. I wasn’t…I wasn’t myself.” (And he can’t remember what it felt like—only that he had been outside his own body, left in some dimension of his own, his mind locked inside a cage of muscle and throat and bleeding palms that seared with the strain of actions he hadn’t told them to do.) “They had to stop me.” His pulse quickens at just the memory, the flash of adrenaline ( _survival_ ) a frantic thing so easily called upon—but now is not the time (there’s no _reason_ for it), and he swallows it down, fixed firm on the dapple of moonlight through the leaves. “And when I woke up, I…had this.”

Sakura stares at the scar quietly, morbid and fascinated and distanced at once, a thin crease put between her brow as her fingertips trace the edges of whitened skin. He can feel her power beneath that touch, like the spirit of a _kami_ unleashed (she’s too young to restrain it, too young to know even what she _has_ , though it has been sought after through the whole time they’ve been together), and beneath even the smallest hint of it, he shivers, eyes darting quick from her touch to the worry that lines her face.

“It…must have been painful,” she says, hushed soft like a secret, “But…you’re here now, because of it.” Kurogane’s eyes jolt to her own, the furrow in his brow tearing loose. “I mean—Tomoyo-hime, right?—without her, you wouldn’t have been able to grow from that.”

Those fingers curl into a steady squeeze around his hand, that small mouth curved into a warm smile, and Kurogane, breath torn clean from him, just stares. The princess only slips away one palm to take another sip of her tea, though the other stays still in a gentle hold, dwarfed against the breadth of his own, but there all the same.

“Kurogane-san,” Sakura starts, long after the quiet has settled and she has drawn her hand away (and the loss of it sticks in him like a wound, the ghost of its warmth tingling still within his skin). Her voice stumbles through a breath of hesitation, something like shyness clinging to it where her fingers fiddle over her cup. “Can I, um…just, you know, when it’s like this—can I…call you _Otousan_?”

It’s the least thing he expects. Even with its mentioning before, even with a hinting that this _could_ happen ( _They want that from you, you know?_ ), it still leaves him with cold blood and frozen breath and dark lashes blinking wide.

(He’s not his father.

He doesn’t have to be.)

The swallow stings when it rolls down his throat, and the burn of his skin lingers when his eyes cut away—but he nods.

It’s short, not a sound tacked on with it. She sees it, all the same.

“Oh!” peeps Sakura then, as though a great realization had just struck her. “Oh, I forgot—I was looking into festivals, like you mentioned, and there’s so _many_ here—most of them are, um, for summertime, I think; so since it’s still spring, there’s a little less, now—but I saw that they have a lantern festival soon, so I was wondering if, um, if you’d want to go?” Her smile stretches wide in a helpless frazzle as her words pitch into a high whisper. “N-Not that, um, only _we_ have to go—we could invite everyone, of course—but I just thought of, um, what you were saying, before—”

“Sounds like you’ll need a _wagasa_.” Her eyes startle quick to him, breath stilled in her chest. “And a _furisode_ , or a _yukata_. You’d just…need a nice _obi_ , or something.” He drawls out a low sigh, dipping just faint into familiar ripples of irritation. “Which means we’ll be going back to that damn vendor again— _don’t_ tell the mage, or the _manjuu_ ; they’ll be in there long enough to clear the shelves, between the two of ‘em.”

Sakura snorts into a soft laugh at that, its sound melting slow into the quiet.

(Her tea is near-finished, and there’s tiredness in her bones, something he picks up on as easily as the breeze that carries through the rafters above them.

It’s a passing thought, when he reasons a wind chime would fit well within them.)

“I…wonder if it’s wrong, to feel this way,” she murmurs, spoken like an absent ponder of her own, “But being with all of you, it…feels more like family than the one I remember.” She toys with her cup again, drawn close to her lips, but not drank from. “Is that—is that awful, of me?”

He can feel something like shame in her, growing fast within the tremor of her fingers, the hesitation with which she lets that cup droop, just enough.

“I don’t…think about them.” It comes slow from him, the weight of its admission a dragging thing (but if she needs to hear it, if it will wipe that shame from her, he’ll _give_ it, nonetheless). “My parents. But I was.” His fingers curl to fists about his knees, eyes turned away. “It’s…easier to forget, sometimes, but…forgetting leaves you with nothing.”

(It’s something he knows, as soon as its said, that she _understands_ , viscerally—her eyes jolt away and her mouth turns thin, the tension in those small shoulders enough for even him to feel.)

“Remembering can be hard, too,” she says quietly. “Especially—especially remembering _yourself_ , and wondering…are you even that person, anymore?”

He watches as she fiddles with her cup, something tearing beneath his chest that feels too much like a child standing on a bloodied battlefield, not a man sitting in silence—but it’s enough of a thing (cold, aching, haunted, _growing_ ) that makes him understand, too.

“No one ever _will_ be,” he rumbles, “All you are is who you are now. All you _have_ is what you have now. It’s part of moving on.”

She doesn’t ask _what_ he, himself, is moving on from, just as he doesn’t ask it of her.

(He doesn’t have to.)

They sit in the quiet, the moon gleaming closer through its tilt. The girl finishes her tea and blinks tiredly, breath coming slow from her, knees shifting in their bent; it’s after some time, the air growing cool around them, that she cradles her cup within her hands and smiles.

“I’m grateful I have all of you,” she whispers, “Syaoran-kun, and Moko-chan, and Fai-san.” There’s a yawn in her voice, and a slump in her spine, the weight of her head sinking to his shoulder slow where it falls, even as its touch sends a shockwave through him that pulls muscle tense and bone tight, if for a moment. “And,” she sighs, lashes drooping, “And you, _Otousan_.”

He stares away for a long moment. The grit of his jaw aches, the furrow of his brow a tight thing, all brought on too sudden for him to fight down.

(He’d never thought of _this_ being a reality—not blood, not death, but _life_ , paved neatly beneath his feet in a direction he’d only given passing scoffs towards—and _now_ —

Now, Kurogane blinks hard, swallows down the sting in his eyes, cuts his gaze quick to the rafters and stills the tremor in his lungs as the girl against him drowses further into lowered lash and calming breath.

Now he sits and rasps his fingers in a half-formed itch over black silk, shuts his eyes for a moment beneath the wrinkle of his brow, stares hard with a hitch of one slow breath at the curl of leaves above.

He had never _wanted_ to move on, buried beneath too much bitterness to see it as anything more than denial.

Now, for the first time, the child trapped within him reasons that he can.)

The bob of his throat is not a quiet thing when he blinks his eyes clear, scarred palm dragged quick to scuff over the squeeze of them. He stares at the floorboards, and then at his hand, and then turns slow to the girl at his shoulder, her hair tumbled into a frazzled mess against the wrinkle of white silk.

Its with only slight hesitation that he slips his hand from his knee, raises it slow to plant over the crown of that small head. He tousles his fingers through the silk of her hair gently, and in the quiet, chooses that he _will_.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been too long since I’ve took a crack at a Kuro-centric fic, and I was honestly on my toes through most of this debating whether it would swing towards fluff or angst. (The angst won out, unsurprisingly.)
> 
> [This playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5WqZWWBb0pfSvFWFvlAZLO) carried me through countless scenes when I was writing this out, and had a heavy hand in how I shaped his characterization (especially Khalid's [‘Self,’](https://open.spotify.com/album/6KT8x5oqZJl9CcnM66hddo) and _god_ , I need someone to make an amv to this.)
> 
> The prayer beads, or mala, that Sakura picks out was loosely inspired by [these](https://i.etsystatic.com/8776241/r/il/5f71b5/1532709052/il_fullxfull.1532709052_9afm.jpg) [ones](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0357/8593/products/6008712_N16030201_720x.jpg?v=1473790250). Mala are used in religions all around the world, and I definitely fell into a rabbit hole researching them. The syllables Kurogane recites with them are kuji-in, mantras tied to Japanese esoteric buddhism that have historical uses in ninjustu, where they are used as a meditation tool. I thought this would be a nice detail to tack in as a callback to the context of what feudal-era ninja would have likely trained under.
> 
> Outo has always been a feast for characterization, for me. In terms of Kurogane, I've always been drawn to the parallels we see: it’s the first world with clear visual similarities to his Japan, the first with demons similar to the ones in Suwa, and the first where the family dynamic really cements itself into being. There’s a lot going on under the surface—both a confrontation with what was, and an opportunity for what could be—and I loved being able to explore that, here. The references to priestblood and healer's magic pull from a headcannon of mine that Kurogane has inherited his mother's power, but is unable to awaken it to its full potential until later on in life. It's since become the foundation for a resettled Suwa AU I've been working on; if you liked the Kuro-centric narrative in this, feel free to take a peek at it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19766836/chapters/46791697).
> 
> It’s been a while since I’ve connected so heavily with something I’ve written, start-to-finish (the last one was definitely ['still'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580292), which remains a personal favorite of the more recent things I’ve done), so getting that feeling again was a joy to have. I’d love to know what you thought about this; getting to hear your interpretations always get me geekin. Thanks for giving this big guy a read!


End file.
